Tropical Storms Hit Central U.S., 10 Killed

Managua Tropical Storm Alex, the season’s first hurricane in the Atlantic, killing at least 10 people in Central America, local media reported on Monday. Hundreds of people were evacuated from lowland areas in El Salvador, when Alex storms into the Gulf of Mexico. Six people were killed and their bodies were found drifting in the River San Lucas, said an official with Nicaragua. In the western part of Guatemala, a landslide buried two farmers as they worked on a road improvement project, the Office of Emergency Response, Conred, reported.

U.S. National Disaster Management Center, Alex is still going strong storms on Tuesday local time Wednesday Hurricane season this year came not as usual. Pacific typhoon, Agatha, who appeared before the June 1 killing 156 people in Guatemala.Tropical storm Alex was somewhat weakened after the rain down in Belize, but continue to create gusts of wind and heavy rains, said the United States National Hurricane Center .

Nevertheless, the storm did not immediately threaten the activities of oil drilling in wells Macondo of BP Plc (British Petroleum), U.S. Coast Guard said. Alex, the first hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season in 2010, has a wind speed of nearly 65 km per hour and was at about 90 km west of Chetumal, Mexico.

The storm was expected to subside when entering Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula, said Miami-based hurricane center. Atlantic cyclone began to move on June 1 to 30 November and meteorological experts predict this year will be the most prone to hurricanes. (Xinhua-Oana)

3.3 earthquake rattles Fontana area

A 3.3 earthquake struck the Fontana area Thursday morning, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.Dozens of residents in Fontana, Rialto, Rancho Cucamonga San Bernardino and surrounding cities told the U.S. Geological Survey they had felt the quake, which struck at 5:14 a.m.

The quake was centered about three miles north of Fontana and four miles west of Rialto (that’s about 46 miles east of downtown Los Angeles).The USGS did not say which fault they believed the quake was linked to.

Tropical storm Darby strengthened off Mexico's Pacific coast on Thursday

Tropical storm Darby strengthened off Mexico’s Pacific coast on Thursday and could become a hurricane but is not expected to threaten land before next week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.Darby, the fourth named storm of the eastern Pacific season, had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph and was 230 miles south of the Mexican beach town of Puerto Escondido. The strengthening storm was moving west at 12 mph.

Darby could become a hurricane later on Thursday and might turn north and head toward land early next week, the Miami-based hurricane center said.Pacific hurricanes can cause damage to tourist resorts in Mexico but pose no threat to the country’s oil industry, which is primarily located in the Gulf of Mexico.

Farther out in the Pacific, Celia remained a strong Category 2 hurricane but posed no threat to land.The first hurricane of the Pacific season, Celia was 735 miles south of Baja California and had maximum sustained winds of 110 mph. Celia was forecast to continue moving west away from land.(Reuters)

BP say capturing more oil from blown is out well

Energy giant BP Plc said on Tuesday it had sharply increased the amount of oil it was capturing from its blown-out Gulf of Mexico well, but U.S. officials want to know exactly how much oil is still gushing out.The London-based company’s share price fell 6 percent in London trading after U.S. President Barack Obama said he wanted to know “whose ass to kick” over the massive spill.He told NBC News’ “Today” show that if BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward worked for him, he would have fired him by now over his response to the 50-day-old spill, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP already faces a criminal investigation and lawsuits over the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill. Some 120 miles of U.S. coastline have been soiled in the disaster that threatens the Gulf Coast’s lucrative fishing industry.

The company said on Tuesday it had collected 14,800 barrels of oil on Monday, 33 percent higher than the amount collected on Sunday and the highest capture rate since it installed a new system to contain the oil spill last week.The latest attempt involves a containment cap placed on top of the gushing pipe on the ocean floor. The total amount of oil collected over four days was about 42,500 barrels, BP said.

“We continue to optimize production and make sure we can take much oil out of that stream as we can,” said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the cleanup effort, speaking at a briefing in Washington.Allen said on Monday neither BP nor the government knew just how much oil was gushing out of the well in the first place. “That’s the big unknown right now,” he told a White House briefing on Monday.

BP has given conservative estimates of the oil flow that have been ridiculed by scientists and U.S. lawmakers. Even the government’s much higher estimates of 12,000-19,000 barrels a day seemed on the low side after Allen said the company planned to double its collection of oil from the well to 20,000 bpd (840,000 gallons/3.18 million liters).BP and government officials have said a definitive solution will not come until August when a relief well is drilled.

OBAMA HITS BACK AT CRITICS

The spill has fouled wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama and also sent tar balls ashore on northwest beaches of Florida, where the $60 billion-a-year tourism industry accounts for nearly 1 million jobs.One-third of the Gulf’s federal waters, or 78,000 square miles (200,000 square km), remains closed to fishing, and the toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals is climbing.U.S. weather forecasters gave their first confirmation that some of the oil leaking from BP’s well has lingered beneath the surface rather than rising to the surface. Undersea oil depletes the water’s oxygen content and threatens marine life like mussels, clams, crabs, eels, jellyfish and shrimp.

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at the Washington briefing: “NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil.”Obama, who faces growing criticism that he has appeared detached from the economic and ecological catastrophe hitting four U.S. Gulf states, sharpened his criticism of BP in the NBC interview and hit back at his critics.”I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf,” he said.

“And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick,” he added.Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer and Co, said it was “not a coincidence” that BP’s shares were down after Obama’s “kick ass” comment.

The European oils sector was down overall, however, on the back of lower oil prices due to economic worries. BP shares were trading down about 5 percent, against a drop of 2.13 percent in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index at 1600 GMT.In New York, the company’s American depositary shares were down nearly 5 percent. BP shares have lost about a third of their value since the crisis erupted.

Away from the action in the Gulf, the political heat remained intense in Washington with yet another congressional hearing to bring BP and its peers under renewed scrutiny.The Senate Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing titled: “The Risky Business of Big Oil: Have Recent Court Decisions and Liability Caps Encouraged Irresponsible Corporate Behavior?”Democrats in Congress have been looking at lifting such caps.

The Senate hearing follows one in Chalmette, Louisiana, where two women who lost their husbands in the explosion that unleashed the crisis urged members of Congress to hold BP accountable.”I am asking you to please consider harsh punishments on companies who choose to ignore safety standards before other families are destroyed,” said Courtney Kemp, whose husband, Wyatt, was killed in the explosion.(Reuters)

magnitude 3.7 earthquake occurred in the Santa Monica Bay on Monday afternoon

A magnitude 3.7 earthquake occurred in the Santa Monica Bay on Monday afternoon, the second temblor to hit the area so far today.The latest one hit about four miles off the coast of Hermosa Beach about 5 p.m. This morning, another quake struck off Santa Monica Bay. More than 1,000 people reported feeling that temblor, a magnitude 3.6 that was most pronounced in the Westside and South Bay areas.

No damage or injuries were reported from those quakes, nor from several smaller ones that occurred in the same general region.Residents across Santa Monica, the Westside, Culver City and South Bay beach cities reported feeling the latest quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Did You Feel It? system.

[Updated at 5:23 p.m.: Another Santa Monica Bay temblor has been reported. This was was magnitude 2.9 and occurred north of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.]Also, two apparently unrelated quakes hit Big Bear this afternoon.

small plane crashed into a commercial building in Suffolk County, the state of New York, USA

New York A small plane crashed into a commercial building in Suffolk County, the state of New York, USA, Saturday, injuring two people and thus make the whole building was on fire, police said as quoted by Xinhua news agency. The Cessna, with two chairs, knocking over Varsity Plumbing Supplies companies on Saturday afternoon just outside Long Island MacArthur Airport, according to a local television station WABC, which quoted some official sources.

The accident happened just after 15:00 local time, Saturday. According to initial information from the police radio, airplane and building is on fire, and two people suffered serious injuries. According to the most recent information, the fire had been extinguished, and one victim was taken to hospital by air and another brought by ambulance. Media reports, quoting a U.S. statement Federal Aviation Administration, said the pilot was practicing landing at Long Island MacArthur Airport when the plane went down, about 800 meters from the runway.

Pacific volcano erupts near Marianas islands

SAIPAN, Northern Marianas A volcanic eruption near the Pacific’s Northern Mariana Islands shot clouds of ash and vapor nearly eight miles into the sky, federal scientists said.The eruption occurred early Saturday and appeared to come from an underwater volcano off Sarigan, a sparsely inhabited island about 100 miles north of the U.S. commonwealth’s main island of Saipan.The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

USGS volcanologist Game McGimsey said Sunday that scientists are still trying to pinpoint the source but evidence is pointing to an underwater mountain.”People on the island (Sarigan) heard a loud explosion and almost immediately there was a heavy ash fall which turned to a light fall fairly quickly,” McGimsey told The Associated Press. He said there was no ash in Saipan or Guam.The eruption was fairly brief and no other volcanic clouds have been detected, said McGimsey, who is based in Anchorage, Alaska. Scientists don’t know if the undersea activity is continuing.

Satellite images showed the cloud reaching to 40,000 feet. But the USGS said it was largely water vapor and strong winds were dispersing it.McGimsey said researchers flew over the area Sunday and spotted discolored water presumably over the volcanic vent, estimated at 1,000 feet beneath sea level.(AP)

Tungurahua volcano erupts, Ecuadorean villagers evacuate

the second volcanic eruption in Latin America on Friday, loud explosions shook the ground and rattled windows near the volcano known as Tungurahua in the indigenous Quechua language, 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Quito, officials said.Residents close to the 5,020-meter (16,500 feet) volcano were evacuated from Cusua and Juive Grande villages, the president’s office said in a statement.

Officials in the area said hundreds of families had been moved, while Ecuador’s aviation authorities closed the airport in coastal Guayaquil and altered the routes of some flights to avoid the ash cloud.”The eruptive column is some 10 km (33,000 feet) high,” Hugo Yepes, director of Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, told reporters.

Tungurahua has been classed as active since 1999 and had a strong eruption in 2008. It is one of eight active volcanoes in the country.Yepes said ash plumes could “easily” reach the 35,000 to 40,000 feet at which long distance flights operate. “As such there should be at least a diversion for international routes,” he said.Ash particles can cause serious damage if sucked into airplane engines. An Icelandic volcano caused widespread disruption and major losses for airlines after flights were grounded for days in Europe in mid-April.The authorities temporarily closed the airport in Guayaquil, where the runway was covered in ash, and diverted planes heading there to Quito and Manta.

Officials also altered some flight routes to avoid the plume, including Lima-Quito and domestic routes between the capital and Guayaquil and the Andean city of Cuenca.The national director of civil aviation, Fernando Guerrero, told Reuters that the Guayaquil airport would reopen later once the runway had been cleared.

The authorities have moved to safety about 500 families in five communities close to Tungurahua, officials said, while an unknown number of people left the area of their own accord.”At the moment we are keeping a yellow alert in effect for the area,” said Fausto Chunata, mayor of the nearby town of Penipe, adding that they might order more evacuations later.

Banos, a town popular with foreign and local tourists, was among the places evacuated voluntarily, officials said.In Guatemala, another geologically volatile Latin American country, villagers fled and the international airport was closed after the Pacaya volcano erupted close to its capital.

earthquake estimated at magnitude 5.1 and centered near the California-Mexico

LOS ANGELES, May 18  An earthquake estimated at magnitude 5.1 and centered near the California-Mexico border was felt across a wide area Tuesday, authorities said.The quake apparently an aftershock from the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck Mexicali April 4  hit at 5:38 p.m. PDT, 19 miles southwest of Calexico in Imperial County, the Los Angeles Times reported. The quake was felt in a large area of the border region but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, the newspaper said.

Two people died in Mexicali in the April 4 quake, which also caused substantial property damage — including an estimated $91 million damage in California.The U.S. Geological Survey heard from people in Imperial and San Diego counties who said they felt Tuesday’s quake. People also reported feeling it in Irvine, Long Beach and Los Angeles.(UPI)

Three people were killed and hundreds were evacuated in southern Poland after torrential rain led to flooding along the Vistula River

KRAKOW, Poland, May 17 Three people were killed and hundreds were evacuated in southern Poland after torrential rain led to flooding along the Vistula River, authorities said.Krakow Mayor Jacek Majchrowski declared a state of emergency Sunday night as the river rose almost 30 inches above emergency levels, Poland.pl reported.Further upstream from the city, levels reached almost 50 inches above flood stage, the Web site said.

One of those killed was a fireman who suffered a heart attack during a mission to rescue another man who was reported missing after jumping into the river in an attempt to save his son, officials said.The heavy rain in the region is forecast to last through Friday. More than 8,000 troops are on standby with specialist equipment to aid in rescue efforts, Poland.pl reported.(UPI)