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Two Dead, Five Missing As Powerful Typhoon Slams Into Japan

Two Dead, Five Missing As Powerful Typhoon Slams Into Japan

TOKYO — A powerful typhoon battered many parts of Japan Monday, including Tokyo, disrupting transport and leaving at least two people dead and five missing, local media reported.
Typhoon Phanfone made landfall at the city of Hamamatsu, central Japan, shortly after 8 a.m. (2300 GMT Sunday), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
About 2.7 million people had been advised to evacuate their homes, but most of the advisories were lifted, the Kyodo News agency reported.
The weather agency was still warning of mudslides, swollen rivers and strong winds in some areas of the country.
Tens of thousands of households lost electricity in eastern and central Japan, while rainfall reached 87 millimetres per hour in the city of Shizuoka.
Two people were missing in Yokohama, near Tokyo, after two separate mudslides struck a temple and an apartment building Monday morning.
On Sunday, a 58-year-old woman was found dead after falling from a cliff in strong winds on the island of Okinawa, the Okinawa Times reported.
Three U.S. airmen were swamped by high waves on the island. One of the three was recovered and later pronounced dead at a local hospital while the other two remained missing, U.S. Kadena Air Base said.
Authorities were searching for a university student off the coast of Fujisawa city, south of Tokyo, who also went missing while surfing in the area, broadcaster NHK said.
Airlines cancelled more than 600 flights scheduled for Monday and many train services were temporarily suspended, including Shinkansen bullet trains, it reported.
The approach of Phanfone halted search operations for 12 people missing on Mount Ontake in central Japan after it erupted late last month and left at least 51 dead.
Authorities warned that heavy ash on the flanks of the 3,067-metre volcano posed a mudslide risk as the typhoon reached the country’s main island.
As of 3 pm, the eye of the storm was 210 kilometres off the coast of Ishinomaki city, travelling north-east at 85 kilometres per hour, the agency said.
The fast-moving typhoon carried maximum sustained winds of 126 kph and gusts of 180 kph, the agency said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co suspended all outdoor work at the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in north-eastern Japan, which suffered a triple meltdown after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

AFP Photo/Charism Sayat

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Wildfires Rage Across Drought-Hit California

Wildfires Rage Across Drought-Hit California

Los Angeles (AFP) — As many as 6,000 firefighters were battling a wave of wildfires raging across California, which is gripped by a historic drought and near-record temperatures.

Thousands of residents have been evacuated and buildings ravaged in at least one of the fires in northern California, while southern California has been hit by power blackouts as people turn their air conditioning up to full blast.

There are currently 12 major fires across the vast western U.S. state, including near the town of Weed, where flames damaged or destroyed over 100 buildings including the local church.

“Since last year there are much more fires because of the drought,” CalFire spokeswoman Alyssa Smith told AFP, adding that there have been 200 more fires this year compared to the same time last year.

On Sunday, about 1,000 people were evacuated near Yosemite National Park in central California. The blaze that began near Bass Lake burned 330 acres (133 hectares) in a matter of hours.

California, baking in temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 40 degrees Celsius), is in the third year of its worst drought for decades, devastating its largely agricultural Central Valley in particular.

In southern California, near-record temperatures for a sixth straight day led to a surge in electricity use, triggering outages which left some 7,000 people without power.

California often faces fierce fires in the summer and fall, but wildfire season began early this year, with the extreme drought of recent months generating dozens more blazes.

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

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Clinton ‘100 Percent’ Healthy, Aide Rebuts Brain Damage Claim

Clinton ‘100 Percent’ Healthy, Aide Rebuts Brain Damage Claim

Washington (AFP) – Hillary Clinton’s health is “100 percent,” an aide asserted Tuesday after Republican strategist Karl Rove suggested the former secretary of state had suffered a serious brain injury in 2012.

Rove made the remarks at a conference last Thursday that he attended with President Barack Obama’s former spokesman Robert Gibbs, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.

“Thirty days in the hospital?” Rove reportedly said.

“And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury?” he added. “We need to know what’s up with that.”

Clinton, 66 and the presumptive Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 presidential race, was admitted to hospital in New York for three days to treat a concussion and blood clot she suffered in the fall, and which prevented her from testifying at the time about the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Rove’s comments could be seen as a bid to inject the question of Clinton’s health — and whether she is physically and mentally prepared for another grueling presidential run — into the conversation about 2016.

Clinton’s team quickly rejected Rove’s comments.

“Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said.

As to her health, “She is 100 percent. Period.”

Several Republicans had assailed Clinton for possibly exaggerating the seriousness of her condition in order to avoid testifying before Congress about the deadly September 11, 2012 attack.

In January 2013, she testified for seven hours about the crisis.

On Tuesday, Rove insisted he never said Clinton might have brain damage, as Page Six suggested.

“I never used that phrase,” Rove told Fox News.

“She had a serious health episode,” he said, adding that Clinton spent a month from early December 2012 fighting a virus and dehydration which caused her to cancel a Middle East trip, and then the effects from her fall.

Clinton’s team was “not particularly forthcoming” with details and ought to release her full medical records, which will be requested by U.S. media anyway should she announce a run, he said.

Health concerns are fair game for all presidential candidates, he added, and pointed to scrutiny John McCain endured in 2008.

“My point is that Hillary Clinton wants to run for president but she would not be human if this didn’t enter in as a consideration,” Rove said.

“This will be an issue in the 2016 race whether she likes it or not.”

The Democratic National Committee brushed away the strategist’s initial remarks, saying “it appears Karl Rove’s medical diagnoses are about as solid as his election night prognostications.”

Rove had predicted Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would defeat incumbent Obama in 2012.

Meanwhile, Clinton is keeping up a breakneck pace of speeches and appearances across the country, and she is preparing a book tour to push her new autobiography which comes out next month.

Photo: National Constitution Center via Flickr

Climate Change Assessment Paints Stark Picture Of Potential Damage

Climate Change Assessment Paints Stark Picture Of Potential Damage

By Neela Banerjee and Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The warming of Earth, with human consumption of fossil fuels as the main cause, will have severe consequences for every region of the United States, according to the Third National Climate Assessment released Tuesday morning by the Obama administration.

Mandated by Congress and published every four years, the report is a science-based resource that is meant to inform public policy and private sector decisions.

The report concludes that extreme weather events influenced by climate change have grown more frequent and intense, including heat waves, drought and severe precipitation. “These and other aspects of climate change are disrupting people’s lives and damaging some sectors of our economy,” the report said.

Most Americans believe that climate change is happening or will happen in their lifetimes, according to a March Gallup poll. But only one in three sees it as “serious threat” to their way of life, the poll reported.

The climate assessment is meant, in part, to drive home the seriousness of the threat by focusing on local impacts. “The overall message is that climate change is happening right now — we can’t think of this as an issue for future generations,” said Radley Horton, one of the lead authors and a climate scientist at the Earth Institute’s Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. “We know that the effects on ecosystems, infrastructure, economics and public health are going to grow.”

The National Climate Assessment also assesses humanity’s contribution to climate change, the thorniest question tied to the issue and the one at the heart of political disputes over it. Very early on, the report states that lots of different kinds of evidence “confirm that human activities” have driven global warming over the last 50 years, specifically the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

The paper tackles in plain English and swift strokes the arguments that climate contrarians generally use to deny that man-made climate change is occurring. The report states, for example, that satellite data show that the warming has not been caused by greater solar activity or by volcanic eruptions. A so-called pause in recent global average land temperatures “appears to be related to cyclic changes in the oceans and in the sun’s energy output,” the report said.

Written by more than 240 scientists, business people and other experts, the report explains that the U.S. annual mean temperature has risen by 1.3 to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century, with most of the increase occurring since 1970. “Temperatures are projected to rise another 2 degrees F to 4 degrees F in most areas” of the country over the next few decades, according to the report.

If the U.S. and other big emitters enact polices that would cut emissions considerably, U.S. temperatures would rise about 3 degrees to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Under today’s “business-as-usual scenario,” U.S. average temperatures would rise by 5 degrees to 10 degrees, which means that summers in New Hampshire by the end of the century would be as hot as those in North Carolina now. “Extreme heat is becoming more common, while extreme cold is becoming less common,” the report says.

The report sketches out sobering scenarios for different regions. The Northeast and Midwest, for instance, would see a huge increase in heavy downpours that could lead to flooding and erosion. The Southwest would be more prone to extreme heat, drought and wildfire. The first rains after fires compound the peril and damage because they wash down debris and earth left behind, said Gregg Garfin, a climatologist at University of Arizona and a co-author.

The climate assessment arrives amidst increased efforts by the Obama administration to address climate change. In February, the administration created so-called climate hubs under the Agriculture Department to connect farmers and ranchers with universities, industry groups and federal agencies to help prepare for disasters worsened by climate change, such as wildfires, pests, flooding and drought.

Obama has also directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department to develop a new generation of tougher fuel economy standards for heavy-duty, long-haul trucks. The draft rules are due by March 2015 and the final version a year later.

The president also plans to ask Congress for $1 billion in his 2015 budget to establish a “climate resiliency fund” that would finance research, preparation and infrastructure to adapt to extreme weather driven by global warming.

Recently, the administration also came out with a blueprint to reduce emissions of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. And in early June, the EPA is expected to issue the first-ever rules to cut greenhouse gases from power plants, the single-largest source of emissions.

The White House touted the report as comprehensive, but also useful at the local level.

“We expect it will contain a huge amount of practical, usable knowledge that state and local decision-makers can take advantage of as they plan on — for the impacts of climate change and work to make their communities more resilient,” White House adviser John Podesta said Monday.

To promote the findings, the president is slated to be interviewed in the Rose Garden by local and national meteorologists on Tuesday, an effort to reach past Washington policymakers. The administration was slated to host a summit on energy efficient building construction this week. And later in the week, the White House planned to announce another round of private-sector commitments to using alternative energy sources.

The strategy was yet another to maneuver around Republican opposition on Capitol Hill — if only to take incremental steps. Although the White House expressed support for energy-efficiency legislation coming up in the Senate this week, aides expressed little hope Congress will pass it. Instead, Obama planned to take executive action and tout outside efforts for mitigating the impact of climate change.

Casting the issues as a local one also fits the White House thinking about the state of the debate. As polls show a majority of people believe it is a real phenomenon, Obama has declared he has “no patience” for climate change skeptics. The next stage of the discussion should be about understanding the impact and preparing for the changes.

Podesta offered this message to doubters on Monday:

“I’d say that probably look out your window, and you’ll begin to feel the effects. But 97 percent of scientists agree,” he said. “It’s well-known science now. The data continues to come in. If anything, we’re seeing some of the effects that were predicted by the models coming in more quickly.”

AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe