Be Alert! - Sept.16, 2006

Psalms 33:10 -12
The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations;
He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 
The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.

Psalms 29:10
The LORD sat as King at the flood;
Yes, the LORD sits as King forever.

Hebrews 12:26  
And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN."

Romans 8:22
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

Luke 21:25-26
"There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

1 Corinthians 15:12-20  
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.  But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

U.S. Has Second Warmest Summer On Record
Nation Experienced Warmest January - August Period On Record

NOAA - NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER [aka - US DEPARTMENT of COMMERCE] - Sept. 14, 2006 — Summer 2006 was the second warmest June-to-August period in the continental U.S. since records began in 1895, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Additionally, the 2006 January-to-August period was the warmest on record for the continental U.S. Above-average rainfall last month in the central and southwestern U.S. improved drought conditions in some areas, but moderate-to-extreme drought continued to affect 40 percent of the country.

U.S. Temperature Highlights
The average June-August 2006 temperature for the contiguous United States (based on preliminary data) was 2.4 degrees F (1.3 degrees C) above the 20th century average of 72.1 degrees F (22.3 degrees C). This was the second warmest summer on record, slightly cooler than the record of 74.7 degrees F set in 1936 during the Dust Bowl era. This summer's average was 74.5 degrees F. Eight of the past ten summers have been warmer than the U.S. average for the same period.

The persistence of the anomalous warmth in 2006 made this January-August period the warmest on record for the continental U.S., eclipsing the previous record of 1934. A blistering heat wave in July impacted most of the nation, breaking more than 2,300 daily records and more than 50 all-time high temperature records. Additional high temperature records were broken during the first part of August.

The Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index (REDTI) ranked this summer as the sixth highest index in the 112-year record. Using this index, NOAA scientists determined that the nation's residential energy demand was approximately 10 percent higher than what would have occurred under average climate conditions for the season.

Last month was the 11th warmest August on record in the contiguous U.S.

U.S. Precipitation Highlights
The summer's record and near-record heat, combined with below-average precipitation, worsened drought conditions throughout much of the summer for large parts of the country. But above-average rainfall in August helped ease drought conditions in some of the most severely affected states.

An active monsoon season in the Southwest gave New Mexico its wettest August on record, and precipitation in Arizona also was above average. Drought relief extended to New Mexico, parts of Arizona and west Texas. However, the heavy downpours brought flooding across parts of the entire region.

The Plains states, the Midwest, the Carolinas and parts of the Northeast benefited from above-average precipitation in August. This helped reduce drought severity in other areas such as the Dakotas and parts of Oklahoma but was not sufficient to end drought in the most severely affected parts of those states.

Drought conditions worsened in some parts of the country. Rainfall in August was below normal from Montana to southern California and the Pacific Northwest. This contributed to a continuing and already-active wildfire season. Through early September, the number of acres burned in the U.S. is nearing the record of almost 8.7 million acres burned during all of 2005, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Global Highlights
It was the third warmest June-August (northern hemisphere summer) on record for global land- and ocean-surface temperatures since records began in 1880 (1.01 degrees F/0.56 degrees C above the 20th century mean) and the fourth warmest August (0.0.97 degrees F/0.54 degrees C). The warmest northern-hemisphere summer and August occurred in 1998.

In 2007 NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, celebrates 200 years of science and service to the nation. Starting with the establishment of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA. The agency is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 60 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.

Relevant Web Sites
Climate of 2006: August in Historical Perspective

NOAA Drought Information Center

Media Contact:John Leslie, NOAA Satellite and Information Service, (301) 713-1265

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2700.htm

China 's storm response: Too good to be true
NEW YORK TIMES - By Howard W. French - September 13, 2006 - XI'AO, China Where as many as 10,000 fishing boats once docked, today only a few bob in a long, serpentine harbor here still flecked with wrecks. All along the shoreline, families that only recently made a rich living from the sea, stare glumly at reminders of their loss.

Clearly, this fishing village and others near the mouth of a bay on China's southeast coast suffered catastrophic damage when Typhoon Saomai blew through on the afternoon of Aug. 10, a Category 4 storm packing sustained winds of 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, per hour. Yet the following day, initial reports listed only 17 people dead and 138 missing in all of Fujian Province.

The emergency response was trumpeted as a triumph. By noon that day, according to news reports distributed nationwide, over 500,000 people had been evacuated, and 5 million others had been alerted to the impending danger through short messages sent to cellphone users.

In a visit to the area two days later, the Chinese deputy prime minister, Hui Liangyu, praised the local authorities for their "proper direction, for effectively limiting the damage, for strong measures and for orderly rescue work," adding that "the Party is here" to support you.

In the storm's aftermath, however, a very different account of events has gradually taken shape. Although it is unlikely that an accurate death toll will ever be established, the actual numbers appear to far surpass the official totals.

"I've never seen such a big wind, and neither has anyone who has lived here in the last 60 years," said Wei Dingxian, a 34-year-old fisherman whose boat was destroyed, and whose brother drowned on another craft.

Wei told one Chinese magazine that he saw bodies floating in the bay for several days as he searched for his brother.

An internal news agency report compiled in the days after the storm and intended just for the authorities, bluntly contradicted the official picture. In succeeding days, Chinese news media also took an increasingly skeptical view of the official accounts.

After consulting with local fishermen, these publications, among them Chinese Newsweek, concluded that about 900 boats from the area had been lost at sea. Since each fishing boat typically has a crew of two, they estimated that in the vicinity of 2,000 people had died just in the immediate area, where the storm hit the hardest.

During events like these it often seems that the Chinese authorities are at war with the news, or even with the truth itself. Even weeks after the storm, local residents complained bitterly that the deputy prime minister had been led to a village where the damage was minimal, and wittingly or not, participated in a masquerade.

In a further indication of official sensitivities, a foreign reporter's visit to the site was interrupted by a video camera- wielding crew of local propaganda office officials who stopped the reporter's tour of the area and escorted him out of the province.

Earlier this year, the country's State Council, or cabinet, approved a law that would assess large fines against "news media that violate the regulations and release reports about the situation regarding management of sudden incidents."

Added to that, just this week, China announced new regulations prohibiting foreign news organizations from distributing news, photos or graphics in China, and warning them against reports that "endanger national security."

In the case of Typhoon Saomai, however, it was the Chinese news media themselves who confronted, however tentatively, the fictional picture of a monster storm masterfully handled.

Two days after the storm, and a day after Hui visited the area, reporters from the headquarters of the official Xinhua press agency in the neighboring Zhejiang Province arrived here to discover scenes of devastation unlike anything that had been reported.

Following a tradition that dates from the time of Mao Zedong, who pressed the agency into service as part of an exclusive information gathering network for the country's top leaders, the Xinhua team wrote an "internal reference" report that very night.

That report, portions of which have been quoted in the Chinese news media, forced the Fujian Province officials to revise upward their estimates of the storm's death toll to 178, with another 94 missing, for the area.

The revised figures were published grudgingly, along with comments in the Fujian Daily newspaper from the provincial Communist Party secretary for the province, condemning "some media, including reporters from other provinces who came to the area hit by the calamity and produced a lot of unreal reports based on hearsay."

Over the ensuing weeks, though, cracks in the façade of silence over the true extent of death and devastation from the storm continued to widen, including a subsequent report from a state television crew that put the number of boats in the harbor at the time of the storm at 10,000.

The most telling accounts of what happened here, of the carnage, and of the more than 900 boats reliably known to have been lost at sea, still come from the locals themselves.

Details, such as the beating of a mayor by women angered by the disappearance of their loved ones, and what many feel was a poor response to the emergency, have not been published even in the Chinese reports that have dared take on the official view of the disaster.

"This tragedy won't make our hearts turn cold, it's the lack of government performance that will," said a fisherman who related angrily the villagers' attempts to convey their situation to senior Communist Party officials who visited the area.

The fisherman spoke on the condition on anonymity, citing dangers to anyone who dared speak about the storm's toll, even a month afterward.

"This is the consistent style of the Chinese government," he said. "Big or small problems are suppressed as much as possible. They have no courage to face any of them."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/13/news/china.php

Floods leave thousands homeless in West Africa
REUTERS - By Abdoulaye Massalatchi - September 14, 2006 - NIAMEY -- Floods have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in Niger and Burkina Faso, leaving them prone to deadly diseases like cholera and malaria, officials in the West African countries said on Thursday.

Torrential rains and flash floods destroyed mud brick buildings and left more than 32,000 people homeless in Niger, one of the world's poorest countries on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, the government said.

At least four people have been killed in the former French colony, with the highest rainfall since records began in 1923 registered in the oasis town of Bilma, more than 1,300 km (800 miles) northeast of the capital Niamey.

Meteorologists say the rainfall in Bilma, where more than 4,000 people were forced from their homes, has been more than in the last 10 years combined. In one night 63 mm (2.5 inches) fell.

"Aside from the loss of homes, the floods cause crop damage, the loss of livestock, illnesses such as cholera and malaria, and cut off remote regions," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.

The government in Niger, where 3.6 million people -- more than a third of the population -- were left short of food last year following drought and a locust plague, was distributing tents, blankets, mosquito nets and medicine.

The United Nations World Food Programme was also providing additional food aid.

Annual heavy rains in West Africa help trigger outbreaks of waterborne diseases including cholera, flooding latrines and contaminating wells.

Cholera killed at least five people among 60 cases notified in the town of Zinder, 750 km (470 miles) east of Niamey, in the first outbreak in Niger since the rains began in July, medical sources told Reuters.

Cholera can kill within 24 hours by inducing vomiting and diarrhoea that cause severe dehydration, but it is treatable using a simple mixture of water and rehydration salts.

More than 10,000 people have also been affected by flooding in neighbouring Burkina Faso while parts of Mauritania, Mali and Nigeria had seen homes and crops destroyed as well as livestock drowned, the United Nations said.

"The populations affected have been temporarily accommodated in schools and administrative buildings, but the school term starts soon and we will have to put them in tents," said Amade Belem of Burkina Faso's national emergency management team.

Buildings, farmland and roads were destroyed in the region around Gorom Gorom, 300 km (186 miles) north of the capital Ouagadougou, while further west around Gnassoumadougou 1,000 hectares of arable land were swamped.

(Additional reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou in Ouagadougou)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14281975.htm

Arctic Ice Melting Rapidly, Study Says
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By SETH BORENSTEIN - September 13, 2006 - Arctic sea ice in winter is melting far faster than before, two new NASA studies reported Wednesday, a new and alarming trend that researchers say threatens the ocean's delicate ecosystem.

Scientists point to the sudden and rapid melting as a sure sign of man-made global warming.

"It has never occurred before in the past," said NASA senior research scientist Josefino Comiso in a phone interview. "It is alarming... This winter ice provides the kind of evidence that it is indeed associated with the greenhouse effect."

Scientists have long worried about melting Arcticsea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it.

For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent; and over the past year, it's declined by another 1.9 percent, according to Comiso.

A second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice melt in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two years. This is partly because of local weather but also partly because of global warming, Comiso said.

The loss of winter ice is bad news for the ocean because this type of ice, when it melts in summer, provides a crucial breeding ground for plankton, Comiso said. Plankton are the bottom rung of the ocean's food chain.

"If the winter ice melt continues, the effect would be very profound especially for marine mammals," Comiso said in a NASA telephone press conference.

The ice is melting even in subfreezing winter temperatures because the water is warmer and summer ice covers less area and is shorter-lived, Comiso said. Thus, the winter ice season shortens every year and warmer water melts at the edges of the winter ice more every year.

Scientists and climate models have long predicted a drop in winter sea ice, but it has been slow to happen. Global warming skeptics have pointed to the lack of ice melt as a flaw in global warming theory.

The latest findings are "coming more in line with what we expected to find," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "We're starting to see a much more coherent and firm picture occurring."

"I hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he added.

Serreze said only five years ago he was "a fence-sitter" on the issue of whether man-made global warming was happening and a threat, but he said recent evidence in the Arctic has him convinced.

Summer sea ice also has dramatically melted and shrunk over the years, setting a record low last year. This year's measurements are not as bad, but will be close to the record, Serreze said.

Equally disturbing is a large mass of water - melted sea ice - in the interior of a giant patch of ice north of Alaska, Serreze said. It's called a polynya, and while those show up from time to time, this one is large - about the size of the state of Maryland - and in an unexpected place.

"I for one, after having studied this for 20 years, have never seen anything like this before," Serreze said.

The loss of summer sea ice is pushing polar bears more onto land in northern Canada and Alaska, making it seem like there are more polar bears when there are not, said NASA scientist Claire Parkinson, who studies the bears.

The polar bear population in the Hudson Bay area has dropped from 1,200 in 1989 to 950 in 2004 and the bears that are around are 22 percent smaller than they used to be, she said.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060913/D8K49EB00.html

See NASA Press Release:

Arctic Ice Meltdown Continues With Significantly Reduced Winter Ice Cover

Tropical Storm Lane Heads Toward Baja
ASSOCIATED PRESS - September 15, 2006 - A strengthening Tropical Storm Lane roared toward the hurricane- battered tip of the Baja California Peninsula early Friday, lashing Mexico's Pacific coast with winds and rain.

The Mexican government issued a hurricane warning for Islas Marias, and a hurricane watch remained in effect along the Pacific coast from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami....

Lane's maximum sustained winds were near 65 mph with higher gusts, an increase from late Thursday, the center said. It was still below the threshold of 74 mph for hurricane status, but further strengthening was forecast.

Earlier, Lane dumped rain and whipped up waves in Acapulco, where authorities closed the port to small boats Wednesday. Streets were covered in up to 16 inches of water _ including the beachside Costera Miguel Aleman, which runs past many luxury hotels.

There was also some flooding at the Acapulco airport, although service was not interrupted.

At 8 a.m. EDT, Lane was centered about 340 miles southeast of Cabo San Lucas, the hurricane center said. It was moving northwest near 12 mph.

Its current path would take it parallel to Mexico's Pacific coast. Its outer bands would lash the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula before it was expected to turn back toward the Mexican mainland, near Culiacan. It was not expected to hit the United States.

The storm was following the same path as Hurricane John, which raked Mexico's Pacific coast early this month before slamming into Baja California, killing five people.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/15/D8K5BS000.html

Race is on to save the Dead Sea
Jordan calls in architect Foster
THE SUNDAY TIMES of LONDON – By Robert Booth - September 3, 2006 – Britain: LORD FOSTER, the British architect, has been enlisted by the King of Jordan for his most grandiose project yet — a canal carved through the Sinai desert to rescue the Dead Sea from environmental disaster.
He has already held talks with the governments of Israel and Jordan about a $3 billion (£1.57 billion) scheme to transfer water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.
His proposal is to carry sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba to replenish the Dead Sea, which has shrunk by a third over the past 50 years and faces total evaporation. At stake is the area’s delicate ecology and a tourist industry — that draws 100,000 Britons each year — centred on the sea’s mineral-rich waters and mud.
A sequence of canals and pipelines would channel sea water down through the arid Arava valley in southern Israel and Jordan to the salt lake at the lowest point on earth, 415 metres below sea level.
Action is urgently needed. Over the past 50 years the Dead Sea’s depth has fallen by 20 metres. The so-called “Red to Dead” plan is to reverse this fall, which has been so dramatic that it has left the Israeli spa resort of Ein Gedi a mile from the water’s edge.
Foster’s intervention is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious schemes by the architect. Last month he revealed plans for the 2,000ft Moscow City Tower, to cost £830m and house 25,000 people, and he is building the world’s largest new airport in Beijing.
Now 71, he has timed his proposal to coincide with an agreement between the leaders of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to spend a $15m World Bank grant on investigating the feasibility of a canal project.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, have recently signed letters expressing their commitment to the project, despite the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The study will be financed by France, America, the Netherlands and Japan.
It is understood that Foster has personally promoted his version of the plan in informal meetings with senior Israeli officials over the last 18 months, and with a presentation in Amman to representatives of Jordan’s King Abdullah.
The one metre a year fall in the level of the Dead Sea has already left the surrounding terrain unstable and prone to cave in, which puts roads, hotels and chemical plants around the sea in jeopardy. Oases have also been disrupted, affecting bird migrations and desert wildlife, including ibex, gazelles and even leopards.
According to Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of Friends of the Earth in the Middle East, the reduction has been caused by the diversion of the River Jordan, which feeds the Dead Sea, for irrigation and drinking water — mostly by Israel, but also by Jordan and Syria. Today, less than 7% of the river’s original flow reaches the sea.
“A river holy to half of humanity has been reduced to little more than an open sewer,” said Bromberg.
Guy Battle, Foster’s environmental engineer on the project, said this weekend that the plan includes vast desalination plants along the canal to provide fresh water to make the desert bloom and supply drinking water. It is hoped that these facilities, which use the heat of the desert sun to evaporate sea water under a translucent bubble roof, could help reduce regional disputes over water.
Ariel Sharon, the ailing former Israeli prime minister, once called Israel’s diversion of the River Jordan in 1964 the spark that led to the six day war in 1967. Palestinians are still forbidden to sink new wells.
Foster’s office confirmed that he had completed preliminary studies and said the firm was awaiting further instruction from the Jordanian government.
An aide to Shimon Peres, the Israeli deputy prime minister, said: “We have had talks with the Jordanians, and they want to advance this. King Abdullah wants it the most because most of [the structure] would be built in Jordan.”
The three-way project had the potential to boost the peace process, said Peres.
At the northern end of the route, there would be a hydro-electric plant.
However, Friends of the Earth warned that mixing water from the Red Sea with the unique chemical soup of the Dead Sea could create a natural catastrophe. “The [Dead Sea’s] mix of bromide, potash, magnesium and salt is like no other body of water on the planet,” said Bromberg. “By bringing in the marine water, this composition will be changed. There is concern about algae growth and we could see the sea change from deep blue to red and brown and the different waters could separate.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2340495,00.html

Scientist: Planet going back to dinosaur era
REUTERS - September 8, 2006 - NORWICH, England -- Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.

Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24 million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.

Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from 10-50 percent of them could disappear.

"We may very well already be on the breaking edge of a wave of mass extinctions," Thomas told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Scientists predict average global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees centigrade by 2100, mainly as a result of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into the air from burning fossil fuels for transport and power.

"If the most extreme warming predicted takes place we will be going back to global temperatures not seen since the age of the dinosaur," Thomas said.

"We are starting to put these things into a historical perspective. These are conditions not seen for millions of years, so none of the species will have been subjected to them before," he added.

Thomas said scientific observations had already found that -- as predicted by the climate models -- 80 percent of species had already begun moving their traditional territorial ranges in response to the changing climatic conditions.

"That is an amazingly high correlation. It is a clear signature of climate change," he said.

Not only had the animals, birds and insects started to react, but there was evidence vegetation was also on the move.

For example, climate-triggered fungal pathogen outbreaks had already led to the extinction of more than one percent of the planet's amphibian species, Thomas said.

Not only would some species simply find no suitable space to live anymore, but there would be confrontations with invasive species being forced to move their territory. This would produce not just wipe-outs but species' mixtures never seen before.

And the changes would all happen at a faster rate than ever before in evolution.

"In geological terms 100 years is effectively instantaneous," Thomas noted.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/09/07/climate.change.reut/index.html

Dwarf planet that caused huge row gets an appropriate name
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - September 15, 2006 - A dwarf planet that ignited the fiercest row in decades among the world's astronomers has been appropriately named Eris, after the goddess of discord who sparked the Trojan War.

The object, previous known as 2003 UB313, was spotted in January 2005 by a team of Californian astronomers, whose leader, Michael Brown, proposed the name, the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU) said in a press release on Friday.

About the same size as Pluto and likewise inhabiting the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond the orbit of Neptune, 2003 UB313 staked a claim on being the Solar System's 10th planet.

But that claim was rejected by the IAU last month, which ruled that large objects in this region were "dwarf planets" that were too small to be considered fully-fledged planets.

That definition meant that little Pluto lost its 76-year status as the ninth and outermost planet of the Solar System -- a decision that outraged a large number of astronomers, who are campaigning furiously for a review.

Pluto and Eris, together with the large asteroid Ceres, are the forerunners of IAU's new "dwarf planet" category, whose numbers are expectedly to grow rapidly as astronomers, using bigger and better telescopes, identify more and more objects in the Kuiper Belt.

In Greek legends, Eris stirs up jealousy and envy to cause fighting and anger among men.

At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of the Greek hero Achilles, all the gods with the exception of Eris were invited.

Enraged at her exclusion, she spitefully caused a quarrel among the goddesses that led to the Trojan War.

Her name is pronounced "ee-ris", the IAU said, adding without apparent irony that the monicker was accepted "almost unanimously" by two committees that oversee the nomenclature of heavenly objects.

Under the IAU listing, Eris is officially designated (136199) Eris. It has a moon, (136199) Eris I, which has been named Dysnomia. In Greek mythology, Eris had two daughters, Dysnomia, a willful spirit of lawlessness , and Eunomia, a peaceable character who puts an end to strife.

Until Eris was officially named, 2003 UB313 was dubbed Xena, after TV's warrior princess, of which Brown is a fan.

According to measurements by the orbiting Hubble telescope, Eris has a diameter of 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles), making it slightly larger than Pluto.

Campaigners for Pluto say the IAU ruling, made by a vote at a conference in Prague, was unscientific and undemocratic.

Pluto's status had long been contested by astronomers who said its tiny size, odd orbit and orbital plane precluded it from joining the other acknowledged planets.

They also argued that, if Pluto was accepted, the way was open for a vast expansion of the planetary list as more Kuiper Belt objects were uncovered, and this would be confusing for the public.

By the new IAU yardstick, a planet has "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit" -- in other words, it is massive enough to wield a gravity that clears rocks and other debris on its orbital path.

The eight planets recognised by the IAU are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/060915092246.b21nwcof.html

Space probe spots foggy lakes on Saturn's moon
REUTERS - July 28, 2006 - WASHINGTON -- It has methane rain and white crystalline sand dunes, and now scientists say Saturn's moon Titan also has many lakes.

The lakes are probably made up of methane, with a little ethane mixed in, and they are probably the source of the obscuring smog in the frigid moon's atmosphere, researchers reported on Friday.

"This is a big deal," said Steve Wall, deputy radar team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We've now seen a place other than Earth where lakes are present."

The numerous, well-defined dark patches were seen in radar images of Titan's high latitudes taken during a flyby Saturday by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, a cooperative project among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Titan's flat surface is very cold, with a temperature of minus 180 C, and scientists believe its thick atmosphere may occasionally rain methane.

Another team reported on Wednesday that the rain includes a persistent drizzle that keeps the surface of Saturn's largest moon damp. Fierce storms could produce huge droplets of methane.

Saturn has at least 47 moons. Titan, the largest, has geological features similar to those on Earth.

During the flyby, Cassini's radar spotted several dozen lakes, including one about 60 miles long.

"It was almost as though someone laid a bull's-eye around the whole north pole of Titan, and Cassini sees these regions of lakes just like those we see on Earth," said Larry Soderblom of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Titan's dense, smoggy atmosphere makes it very difficult to get good visible images, so Cassini uses radar.

Dark regions in radar images generally mean smooth terrain, while bright regions suggest a rougher surface. Some of the new radar images show channels leading in or out of a variety of dark patches. The shape of the channels also strongly implies they were carved by liquid.

"We've always believed Titan's methane had to be maintained by liquid lakes or extensive underground 'methanofers,' the methane equivalent of aquifers. We can't see methanofers, but we can now say we've seen lakes," said Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn in 2004 after passing Venus and Jupiter. In May, Cassini's instruments spotted regions covered with dunes, possibly made out of methane ice crystals, and last year it saw what appeared to be a big lake on Titan's south pole.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-07-28T191647Z_01_N28343738_RTRUKOC_0_US-SPACE-TITAN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Rover holding up well on Mars
After 2 1/2 years, Opportunity finding new proof of ancient water

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor - September 8, 2006 - - Defying all the odds, the gutsy Mars rover Opportunity is still trundling tirelessly across the Red Planet's rugged landscape and making new discoveries of ancient water 2 1/2 years after it bounced to a landing on a mission designed to last only three months.

Today, Opportunity's mission scientists are reporting on an abundance of the rover's most recent findings. The six-wheeled robot has turned up evidence of mineral crystals that were clearly formed in long-vanished salty water, discovered patches of sandy ground that were once water-soaked, and picked up signs that highly acidic water once flowed through small troughs that mark some features of the terrain.

The discoveries, reported in the journal Science, strengthen the evidence that water indeed once flowed on the Martian surface and add new insights into the brew of chemicals on the planet's rocky outcrops.

But nearly as intriguing to scientists is the six-wheeled rover's durability.

"We're just as amazed as everyone else that the spacecraft is still in great condition and still operating so beautifully," project scientist Bruce Barendt, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an interview Thursday. "We thought maybe the mission might last six months at most -- not three -- but for now there's no telling how long it will continue."

Opportunity is now 5.6 miles from Eagle Crater on the vast Meridiani Plain, where it landed Jan. 24, 2004. It has clambered over the rocks and rims of two other significant impact craters and is pausing now for two days to peer at a smaller one before heading for the largest crater in its vicinity -- a bowl-shaped depression named Victoria, a half-mile wide and 230 feet deep, that mission scientists have had in their sights for more than a year.

Spirit, the other Mars rover that landed three weeks earlier than Opportunity, is still alive, too, but somewhat worn. It continues analyzing rocks in the vastness of Gusev Crater some 6,500 miles away from Opportunity, and despite a burned-out motor that has crippled its right-front wheel and limited its movements, it remains healthy.

Steven Squyres, the Cornell astronomer and principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers, and a team of 17 other mission scientists summarized Opportunity's most recent discoveries in their report in Science.

Just north of a crater named Erebus, Squyres and his colleagues say, the instruments and camera aboard Opportunity examined layers of a sandstone outcrop named Olympia. The outcrop is crisscrossed by small troughs only inches deep, which the team's geologists determined could not have been formed by wind erosion or volcanism. The only possibility, they concluded, was that they were created by flowing water in the far distance past, 2 billion or more years ago, when Mars might -- just might -- have been warm and wet.

"Water flow was more extensive across the ancient Meridiani surface," the scientists said in their report.

In another finding, the scientists used Opportunity's rock abrasion tool, known as the RAT, at outcrops near the rim of Erebus Crater to grind 2-inch circles of rock surface for analysis by the X-ray spectrometer aboard. Various layers of the sandstone bore increased levels of sulfur and magnesium -- evidence that soluble salts had once evaporated from salt water there, the scientists said.

Near the same crater, Opportunity steered toward a feature on an outcrop the scientists named Lemon Rind because it appeared to be partially covered by a thick skin. There the RAT exposed what are most probably salt crystals, remaining after the water evaporated long ago. And just below the surface of a nearby rock dubbed Kalavrita, the RAT uncovered tiny round spheres of hematite, an iron mineral abundant on the Martian terrain that most often forms in water the way rust does.

Along its route, Opportunity also crossed a flat area much like a playa, or dry lake bed, on Earth. Squyres and his colleagues concluded that a "pan" of sulfate particles must have formed there when ancient volcanic rock surfaces were leached by acid waters that have long since evaporated.

When the rover reaches the walls of the huge Victoria Crater, it will find the thickest stack of layered rocks it has yet encountered, and to Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, who is Squyres' deputy, the prospect of analyzing those rocks is truly exciting. Acids in ancient Martian water might not mean an easy environment for life to exist, but at the bottom of Victoria, the scientists hope the signs of water might be different.

"Was there a wet environment that was less acidic there, and perhaps even more habitable?" he wondered.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/08/MNG5TL0AOJ32.DTL

China launches satellite for super fruit and vegetables
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - September 9, 2006 - China has launched a satellite carrying fruit and vegetable as part of a plan to help develop space-enhanced produce to feed the country's 1.3 billion people.

The Shijian-8, a recoverable satellite, was launched aboard a Long March 2C rocket for a mission that will expose 2,000 seeds from nine different categories to cosmic radiation and micro-gravity, Xinhua news agency reported.

The satellite had successfully entered orbit and would be conducting a range of space experiments, it said Saturday.

The data gathered aboard the "seed satellite" will enable scientists to try to cultivate high-yield and high-quality plants, state media quoted the China National Space Administration as saying earlier.

China has been experimenting with space-bred seeds for many years, with rice and wheat exposed to space later offering increased yields.

The satellite, the first dedicated specifically to seeds, was the 23rd recoverable satellite launched by China, Xinhua said.

China's space seed experiments come as the nation seeks ways to feed its population amid a rapid decline in farming land due to swift industrialization.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/09/060909134839.9pelioda.html

Lung Problems Rife Among WTC Responders
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By AMY WESTFELDT - September 5, 2006 - NEW YORK -- Nearly 70 percent of recovery workers who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center suffered lung problems during or after their work at ground zero, a new health study released Tuesday shows.
Less than a week before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mount Sinai Medical Center issued the results of the largest study on related health effects.
It found, among other things, that the ailments tended to be worst among those who arrived first at the site, and that high rates of lung "abnormalities" continued years later.
The study focused mostly on what has been dubbed "World Trade Center cough," which was little understood immediately after the attacks but became a chief concern of health experts and advocates.
Findings highlighted by the study include:
_ Almost 70 percent of World Trade Center responders had new or worsened lung symptoms after the attacks.
_ Among responders who had no health symptoms before the attacks, 61 percent developed lung symptoms while working on the toxic pile.
_ One-third of those tested had abnormal lung function tests.
In lung function tests, responders had abnormalities at a rate double that expected in the general population. Those abnormalities persisted for months and in some cases years after the exposure, the study found.
The findings are based on medical exams conducted between July 2002 and April 2004 on 9,500 ground zero workers, including construction workers, law enforcers, firefighters, transit workers, volunteers and others.
The hospital has been the focal point of New York research on Sept. 11-related illnesses, and thousands have sought treatment there.
The report comes as public concern over the fate of ground zero workers has risen. In a class action lawsuit against the city and its contractors, 8,000 workers and civilians blame Sept. 11 for sinusitis, cancers and other ailments they developed after the attacks….
The city-run World Trade Center Health Registry is tracking the long- term effects on 71,000 people, including those who lived or worked in lower Manhattan at the time of the attacks and the months of cleanup.
Just last week, New York City health officials issued long-awaited guidelines to help doctors detect and treat Sept. 11-related illnesses _ medical advice considered crucial for hundreds of ground zero workers now scattered across the United States.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/05/D8JUP5V00.html

Half a million homeless in India floods, Mumbai hit
REUTERS - August 6, 2006 - HYDERABAD, India - Rescuers in India stepped up efforts on Sunday to help hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes by floods in a southern state as torrential rain hit the country's financial capital.
In southern Andhra Pradesh the death toll from three days of monsoon storms rose to 80, officials said, as 18 people drowned, were electrocuted or killed as houses collapsed overnight....
But relief and rescue operations picked up as rains subsided in most parts of the state. Two airforce helicopters and a dozen speedboats were taking food to nearly 1,000 villages and parts of some towns cut off by the floods.
"Rains are receding. Except in some parts of Telengana, rains are almost over in the state," said M. Satyakumar, director of the Hyderabad Meteorological Center.
"Over half a million people living in low-lying areas of 12 river front districts have been displaced due to the three-day downpour and flooding," Ponnala Lakshmaiah, the state's irrigation minister, told Reuters....
In western Maharashtra, thousands of people were being evacuated from Nanded district, about 650 km (400 miles) east of the state capital, Mumbai, after 25 villages were cut off by heavy rains.
Relief officials said rescuers were using boats to rescue those who had climbed up trees or on to rooftops.
In Mumbai, traffic crawled in the city's western and northern suburbs which were under two feet of water. ...
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-08-06T080059Z_01_SP87167_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-INDIA.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Half a million children in Niger still facing malnutrition
REUTERS AlertNet >Source: Save the Children UK – By Kathryn Rawe – July 26, 2006 - Half a million children in Niger still facing malnutrition
One year after Save the Children began responding to the food crisis in Niger up to 500,000 children are still at risk of malnutrition. The most vulnerable children and their families in the country remain in chronic poverty and the effects of last year are still being felt.
Niger is now experiencing its annual hungry season and Save the Children feeding programmes in Zinder and Maradi regions of the country are currently seeing more than 100 new cases of children with severe malnutrition every day. Stocks from last year's harvest are now running out, ways of earning income are limited and families are waiting for the results of this year's rainy season, which is already up to four weeks late in some regions.
Natalie Hogg, Save the Children's Programme Director in Niger, said: "Thousands of children in Niger still need our help this year. They don't have enough food to eat and many children are suffering from acute malnutrition. Child malnutrition is not the result of a 'one-off' emergency but a result of poverty, poor access to health care, long term under-investment, chronic vulnerability, and climate change. Last year these problems were exacerbated by a failed harvest, but the underlying causes still exist and urgently need to be addressed."
Save the Children is calling for long-term funding to tackle the root causes of the predictable and chronic situation in Niger. Food aid saved children's lives last year but it is a last resort response, not a solution to chronic poverty and under-development in the poorest country in the world. Cash and appropriate, sustainable investment are needed after the TV cameras have moved on….
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/219070/115393376397.htm

To kill by the wild beasts of the earth (Rev 6:8)

Deadly E. Coli Outbreak Hits 20 States
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By ANDREW BRIDGES - September 15, 2006 - Even if you wash the spinach, you still could be at risk. Sober warnings for salad lovers came from federal health officials Friday as they struggled to pinpoint a multistate E. coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened nearly 100 more.

Bagged spinach _ the triple-washed, cello-packed kind sold by the hundreds of millions of pounds each year _ is the suspected source of the bacterial outbreak, Food and Drug Administration officials said.

The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat the spinach. Washing won't get rid of the tenacious bug, though thorough cooking can kill it. Supermarkets across the country pulled spinach from shelves, and consumers tossed out the leafy green.

"We're waiting for the all-clear. In the meantime, Popeye the Sailor Man and this family will not be eating bagged spinach," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University. The Tennessee university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection.

By Friday, the outbreak had grown to include at least 20 states: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wisconsin accounted for 29 illnesses, about one-third of the cases, including the lone death.

"We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over," Gov. Jim Doyle said.

The bug has sickened at least 94 people across the nation, the CDC said. The agency added that 29 people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.

FDA officials said they issued the nationwide consumer alert without waiting to identify the still-unknown source of the tainted spinach.

"Early is good," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adding that the alert may have prevented hundreds more cases.

An industry spokeswoman said public health concerns justified the blanket warning: "It needed to happen this way," said Kathy Means, a spokeswoman for the Produce Marketing Association. "Public health has to trump economics at this time."

Initial suspicions focused on California's Monterey County. Farmers there grow more than half the nation's 500 million-pound spinach crop, according to the Agriculture Department.

"We're trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened. Everybody is terribly concerned," said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Even before the latest outbreak, a joint state and federal effort has been under way in the California county to find and eliminate any possible sources of E. coli contamination.

"We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost," said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA's acting commissioner.

The FDA's top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won't eliminate the risk. "If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it," said Robert Brackett, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.

Messages left with two major bagged vegetable producers, Dole Food Co. Inc., of Westlake Village, Calif., and Ready Pac Produce Inc., based in Irwindale, Calif., were not immediately returned Friday.

E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices. "It is something we don't want to see," he told a food policy conference.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., SuperValu Inc. and other major grocery chains stopped selling spinach, removing it from shelves and salad bars.

"We pulled everything that we have spinach in," said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, S.C.

Local doctors began seeing the first of the ongoing E. coli poisoning cases in late August. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Wisconsin health officials alerted the FDA about the outbreak at midweek.

Consumer activist Barb Kowalcyk said fixing the nation's "fractured network" of food safety agencies could save lives. In 2001, her 2- year-old son, Kevin, died of E. coli, possibly after eating tainted ground beef.

"How can we improve communication between agencies? That needs to happen," the Loveland, Ohio, resident said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and other lawmakers seek a hearing on legislation that would consolidate all federal food safety agencies and establish the Food Safety Administration, her spokeswoman said. Staff members of the House Energy and Commerce committee will examine the situation and current government policy, deputy staff director Larry Neal said.

Not all strains of E. coli cause illness: E. coli O157:H7, the strain involved in the current outbreak, was first recognized as a cause of illness in 1982. That strain causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States, according to the CDC.

When ingested, the bug can cause diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people _ including the very young and old _ can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.

Sources of the bacterium include uncooked produce, raw milk, unpasteurized juice, contaminated water and meat, especially undercooked or raw hamburger.

Anyone who has gotten sick after eating raw packaged spinach should contact a doctor, officials said. Other bagged vegetables, including prepackaged salads, apparently are not affected.

"At this point, we are focused on the issue of the spinach. As we learn more, as we go further, we will alter or change that recommendation," von Eschenbach said.

___

Associated Press writers Beth Rucker in Nashville, Tenn., Robin Hindery in Sacramento, Calif., and Emily Fredrix in Wauwatosa, Wis., contributed to this report.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/15/D8K5IKUG0.html

State watching for supergerms

Bacteria resist antibiotics
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC - By Kerry Fehr-Snyder - July 19, 2006 -- Supergerms that resist antibiotics are spreading in Arizona, sickening some patients for months and prompting health officials to step up prevention efforts.

Doctors are urging patients to take extra precautions against spreading hard-to-treat infections, especially staph infections that break out in the skin but can spread to other parts of the body.

It's not known if any deaths from superbacteria have occurred in the state. Deaths have occurred elsewhere, but Arizona officials are tracking only numbers of cases, not outcomes.

"What was terrible was to see my tiny little newborn in an isolation room," said Heidi Wesolowski of Phoenix, whose son Payson developed an antibiotic-resistant staph infection after a complicated delivery last month and had to be hospitalized for a month.

The king of the bad bugs worrying infectious-disease doctors is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureas. Although staph infections are common - the bacteria live inside many people's noses - antibiotic-resistant strains are multiplying. MRSA symptoms can range from skin boils to necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria.

The superbug outbreaks indicate that bacteria continue to gain resistance against conventional antibiotics, even as few new antibiotics are being developed. Patients suffer longer, and doctors are forced to turn to the most potent antibiotics available, which are more expensive and could speed up a bacterium's adaptive pace to those drugs.

The bugs are affecting the lives and work practices of everyone on the front lines, from patients and doctors to hospitals and state health experts.

One couple's struggle

Eileen Levine was trying to symbolize her love for her husband by getting a large tattoo of two people dancing out of a heart on her lower back two years ago.

Instead, two months later, she got a nasty MRSA infection that left her exhausted and pocked with painful boils. She accidentally gave the infection to her husband, Alan.

"This was a very scary time for us," said Levine, who just turned 40 and works from her Gilbert home as a travel agent.

She suspects she picked up the infection while her tattoo was healing, possibly by leaning on a bacteria-smeared surface. Federal health officials recently linked unlicensed tattoo parlors to the infections.

All Levine knows is she suddenly became "very, very tired" and needed an extra three to four hours of sleep a day.

"Taking a shower was so strenuous that I'd have to rest up to do it," she said.

Levine took four different antibiotics, but none worked. She developed small bumps under her arms that quickly grew to nickel-size boils. They became so painful she had to apply cold compresses.

She mustered just enough energy to drive one of her sons to school and attend a yoga class but did little else.

Her doctor took a sample of the boil fluid. Lab results confirmed the infection was MRSA. Her doctor referred her to an infectious-disease specialist.

About that same time, Levine's husband, Alan, started feeling fatigued. He, too, had contracted MRSA. The couple quickly feared they might spread the infection to their two boys, then 9 and 13.

After four months, Levine and her husband took expensive courses of the antibiotic Linezolid, which killed the bacteria. The cost, about $500 after receiving a special pharmaceutical discount, didn't compare with the toll the bugs took on the couple's lifestyle.

"Four months of my life were really taken from this," she said.

Resistant bacterial infections are what keep infectious-disease doctors like Steven Oscherwitz in business. He routinely sees three to four patients each day with MRSA.

"Infectious-disease doctors used to be only at the universities, but they've been going into private practice because other doctors are calling them in for help," said Oscherwitz, whose office is in Tempe.

In most cases, he studies lab results from bacterial samples to determine which antibiotic will work against a patient's strain.

"It's really good to have a culture result so we can base an antibiotic therapy on that. A lot of doctors give whatever is a free sample from a pharmaceutical rep," Oscherwitz said.

Often, Oscherwitz's first step is to get patients off all antibiotics so he can treat them for resistant strains. Only then can he determine which antibiotics will kill an infection.

The roots of the bacteria-resistance problem lie with overuse of antibiotics. Too many patients who fall ill from a virus demand antibiotics because they're unwilling to let a virus run its course.

"All doctors have that pressure (to prescribe antibiotics)," Oscherwitz said, "and it's hard to stand up to patients and say, 'No.' "

The arsenal of antibiotics for resistant strains is shrinking because pharmaceutical companies have cut back on development of less-profitable drugs.

Methicillin, once the best weapon against staph, is following the same path as penicillin. Penicillin went into use in 1940, and resistance to it has increased over the past 60 years. Methicillin was developed about 40 years ago.

Hospital precautions

Kathleen Howard's weapons against resistant bacteria are basic: lab-culture reports, e-mails, meetings and lots of preaching.

They're the tools that hospital infection-control specialists use to keep germs at bay.

"We remind (workers) to keep your hands clean, wear your barriers and prevent infections from spreading from one patient to another," said Howard, an infection-control specialist at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. "The rule is if it's wet and it's not yours, wear a barrier for it."

In the war against infections, Howard uses various tactics:

• She reviews lab-culture results listing types of bacterial infections and whether any are resistant to certain antibiotics.

• She makes sure patients with staph infections are in private rooms or grouped in semiprivate rooms. While cultures are growing, doctors and nurses often assume an infection is resistant to methicillin.

• She helps determine which infections are caused by hospital- or community-acquired strains. Community strains tend to be more virulent.

• She sends e-mail alerts about the latest measures in infection control. She and her colleague also hold staff orientations to raise awareness of emerging infections.

St. Joseph's stops short of swabbing each admitted patient to find staph infections but posts warnings if patients have dangerous infections.

"When people see signs on the doors, it's a reminder of, 'Let's be careful out there, guys,' " Howard said.

Her biggest message to patients: "Hand washing, hand washing, hand washing."

Clare Kioski has been warning about the overuse of antibiotics for years.

As an epidemiologist for the Arizona Department of Health Services, she investigates cases of infectious diseases that are becoming resistant.

Beginning in October 2004, the department started requiring doctors to report MRSA infections from blood and spinal fluid. In the first full year of reporting, Kioski identified 560 cases. The next year, the number rose to 611.

"We're looking at the tip of the iceberg, and we know there's a lot at the base," she said.

Kioski estimated that community-acquired MRSA made its way to Arizona about four years ago. The community-acquired bacterial strain is different from those in hospitals.

"Just looking at it, you can't tell," Kioski said. "A boil is a boil is a boil, and you can't tell unless you test it."

Community-acquired MRSA produces a toxin that can cause pneumonia.

Kioski also is monitoring the growth of Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus, which infects the blood, and acinetobacter, a growing cause of hospital-acquired pneumonia.

Earlier this year, the DHS tracked the number of acinetobacter infections from early February through late April. It found 236 cases in patients ranging from 3 weeks to 90 years old.

Dr. Tim Kuberski, an infectious-disease specialist in Phoenix, said he is not sure what the solution is for stamping out antibiotic resistance.

"It is a huge issue for the whole country and we don't have an answer," he said.

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8975.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0719superbugs0719.html

A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

LOS ANGELES TIMES - By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer - July 30, 2006 - MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA — The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn't eat solid food for a week. Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats.

For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints — until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland's marine botany lab.

Samples placed in a drying oven gave off fumes so strong that professors and students ran out of the building and into the street, choking and coughing.

Scientist Judith O'Neil put a tiny sample under a microscope and peered at the long black filaments. Consulting a botanical reference, she identified the weed as a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.

O'Neil, a biological oceanographer, was familiar with these ancient life forms, but had never seen this particular kind before. What was it doing in Moreton Bay? Why was it so toxic? Why was it growing so fast?

The venomous weed, known to scientists as Lyngbya majuscula, has appeared in at least a dozen other places around the globe. It is one of many symptoms of a virulent pox on the world's oceans.

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all natural processes on land. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

Off the coast of Sweden each summer, blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea into a stinking, yellow-brown slush that locals call "rhubarb soup." Dead fish bob in the surf. If people get too close, their eyes burn and they have trouble breathing.

On the southern coast of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, high tide leaves piles of green-brown algae that smell so foul condominium owners have hired a tractor driver to scrape them off the beach every morning.

On Florida's Gulf Coast, residents complain that harmful algae blooms have become bigger, more frequent and longer-lasting. Toxins from these red tides have killed hundreds of sea mammals and caused emergency rooms to fill up with coastal residents suffering respiratory distress.

North of Venice, Italy, a sticky mixture of algae and bacteria collects on the Adriatic Sea in spring and summer. This white mucus washes ashore, fouling beaches, or congeals into submerged blobs, some bigger than a person.

Along the Spanish coast, jellyfish swarm so thick that nets are strung to protect swimmers from their sting.

Organisms such as the fireweed that torments the fishermen of Moreton Bay have been around for eons. They emerged from the primordial ooze and came to dominate ancient oceans that were mostly lifeless. Over time, higher forms of life gained supremacy. Now they are under siege.

Like other scientists, Jeremy Jackson, 63, was slow to perceive this latest shift in the biological order. He has spent a good part of his professional life underwater. Though he had seen firsthand that ocean habitats were deteriorating, he believed in the resilience of the seas, in their inexhaustible capacity to heal themselves.

Then came the hurricane season of 1980. A Category 5 storm ripped through waters off the north coast of Jamaica, where Jackson had been studying corals since the late 1960s. A majestic stand of staghorn corals, known as "the Haystacks," was turned into rubble.

Scientists gathered from around the world to examine the damage. They wrote a paper predicting that the corals would rebound quickly, as they had for thousands of years.

"We were the best ecologists, working on what was the best-studied coral reef in the world, and we got it 100% wrong," Jackson recalled.

The vividly colored reef, which had nurtured a wealth of fish species, never recovered.

"Why did I get it wrong?" Jackson asked. He now sees that the quiet creep of environmental decay, occurring largely unnoticed over many years, had drastically altered the ocean.

As tourist resorts sprouted along the Jamaican coast, sewage, fertilizer and other nutrients washed into the sea. Overfishing removed most of the grazing fish that kept algae under control. Warmer waters encouraged bacterial growth and further stressed the corals.

For a time, these changes were masked by algae-eating sea urchins. But when disease greatly reduced their numbers, the reef was left defenseless. The corals were soon smothered by a carpet of algae and bacteria. Today, the reef is largely a boneyard of coral skeletons.

Many of the same forces have wiped out 80% of the corals in the Caribbean, despoiled two-thirds of the estuaries in the United States and destroyed 75% of California's kelp forests, once prime habitat for fish.

Jackson uses a homespun analogy to illustrate what is happening. The world's 6 billion inhabitants, he says, have failed to follow a homeowner's rule of thumb: Be careful what you dump in the swimming pool, and make sure the filter is working.

"We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution," Jackson said, "a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria."

The 55-foot commercial trawler working the Georgia coast sagged under the burden of a hefty catch. The cables pinged and groaned as if about to snap.

Working the power winch, ropes and pulleys, Grovea Simpson hoisted the net and its dripping catch over the rear deck. With a tug on the trip-rope, the bulging sack unleashed its massive load.

Plop. Splat. Whoosh. About 2,000 pounds of cannonball jellyfish slopped onto the deck. The jiggling, cantaloupe-size blobs ricocheted around the stern and slid down an opening into the boat's ice-filled hold.

The deck was streaked with purple-brown contrails of slimy residue; a stinging, ammonia-like odor filled the air.

"That's the smell of money," Simpson said, all smiles at the haul. "Jellyballs are thick today. Seven cents a pound. Yes, sir, we're making money."

Simpson would never eat a jellyfish. But shrimp have grown scarce in these waters after decades of intensive trawling. So during the winter months when jellyfish swarm, he makes his living catching what he used to consider a messy nuisance clogging his nets.

It's simple math. He can spend a week at sea scraping the ocean bottom for shrimp and be lucky to pocket $600 after paying for fuel, food, wages for crew and the boat owner's cut.

Or, in a few hours of trawling for jellyfish, he can fill up the hold, be back in port the same day and clear twice as much. The jellyfish are processed at the dock in Darien, Ga., and exported to China and Japan, where spicy jellyfish salad