In Fresno, the morgue is full of victims from a California heat wave. A combination of heat and power outages killed a dozen people in Missouri. And in parts of Europe, temperatures are hotter than in 2003 when a heat wave killed 35,000 people. Get used to it. –For the next week, much of the nation should expect more ”extreme heat,” the National Weather Service predicts. –In the month of August, most of the United States will see ”above normal temperatures,” forecasters say. –For the long-term future, the world will see more and worse killer heat waves because of global warming, scientists say. The July burst of killer heat waves around the world can’t be specifically blamed on global warming. And they aren’t the worst ever — they still can’t quite hold a melting candle to the scorching heat of America’s 1930s Dust Bowl. But the trend is pointed in that direction, experts say. Heat waves and global warming ”are very strongly” connected, said Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis branch chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The immediate cause of the California heat wave — and other heat waves — […]
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Bush administration’s decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that’s hindered the American effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren’t enough troops to do the job. Many U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington privately concede the point. They say they’ve been forced to shuffle American units from one part of the country to another for at least two years because there haven’t been enough soldiers and Marines to deal simultaneously with Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite militias; train Iraqi forces; and secure roads, power lines, border crossings and ammunition dumps. Although military planners are still finalizing the details, as many as 4,000 additional U.S. soldiers are being sent to Baghdad, including two battalions of the Army’s 172nd Stryker Brigade, four or five military police companies from northern Iraq and a field artillery battalion that’s standing in reserve in Kuwait. But when U.S. forces have cracked down in one place, Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists have popped up in another. Some towns have been pacified multiple times, only to return to chaos as soon as […]
ATLANTA, Georgia — The events unfolding in Lebanon and the Middle East have been shaped by factors including ancient hatreds, European colonialism, and nations and groups jostling for power in light of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lebanon was created by the French in 1920 and was made up of several groups who were divided by their religious ties. Some of the larger groups include Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Druze. ‘The Lebanese do not have a common sense of identity, and they have never been able to develop a central government that is strong and is able to represent all the people,’ said Sandra Mackey, an expert who has written extensively about the Middle East. A Civil War broke out in 1975 among the different factions. The initial reason for the war was the imbalance of power among some of the groups, but soon became ‘a proxy war for interests of the Syrians, Israel, the United States and Iraq,’ Mackey said. ‘In so many ways, we are reproducing today what we had in the Civil War that began in 1975 and ended in 1990,’ she said. Mackey, the author of several […]
WASHINGTON — People who ate a low-fat vegan diet, cutting out all meat and dairy, lowered their blood sugar more and lost more weight than people on a standard American Diabetes Association diet, researchers said on Thursday. They lowered their cholesterol more and ended up with better kidney function, according to the report published in Diabetes Care, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association. Participants said the vegan diet was easier to follow than most because they did not measure portions or count calories. Three of the vegan dieters dropped out of the study, compared to eight on the standard diet. ‘I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs,’ Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, which helped conduct the study, told a news conference. An estimated 18 million Americans have type-2 diabetes, which results from a combination of genetics and poor eating and exercise habits. They run a high risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and limb loss. Barnard’s team and colleagues at George Washington University, the University of Toronto and the University of North Carolina tested 99 people […]
Twelve of America’s national parks, among the most spectacular landscapes in the US, are under threat from climate change symptoms such as forest fires and melting glaciers. Global warming is threatening to ruin many of America’s most treasured national parks, including Yosemite, Yellowstone and Death Valley, environmental groups have warned. The risks include more forest fires, retreating snow lines, disappearing glaciers and the displacing of rare animal species. ‘Rising temperatures, drought, wildfires and diminished snowfalls endanger wildlife and threaten hiking, fishing and other recreational activities,’ said Theo Spencer of the National Resources Defence Council. ‘Imagine Glacier Park without glaciers or Yellowstone without any grizzly bears.’ The report, published jointly by the Defence Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organisation, lists 12 parks considered to be in greatest jeopardy from rising temperatures. All are in the western United States where average temperatures have risen twice as fast as elsewhere in the country. By focusing on the dangers for the parks, the authors are hoping to recruit more members of the public into putting pressure on the US government to act on global warming. Most of the US is in the grip of an intense heat wave just […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
