No sooner had Tropical Storm Flossie dissipated then another tropical cyclone called Tropical Depression 7E formed yesterday, July 30, in the eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA’s TRMM satellite saw “hot towers” in the storm’s center early on July 31, that indicated it would likely strengthen, and it became Tropical Storm Gil hours later. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By Richard Green, Contributor Here in Los Angeles, the subway along Wilshire Boulevard, one of the densest streets in America, ends 13 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The Long Beach (or 710) Freeway and the 210 Freeway, two of the busiest trucking routes in America, are connected by surface streets, even though they are only 4.5 miles apart. Both of these projects have been discussed for decades. The “Subway to the Sea” may finally happen, but even now, it will only go as far as Westwood, and it was delayed because of tantrums from Beverly Hills. It is still not clear what will happen with the 710-210 gap. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
A hot-air tourist balloon carrying seven people in Peru has fallen into the Pacific Ocean, and authorities say they have rescued five women while the craft’s pilot and another man remain missing.
Interior Minister Wilfredo Pedraza says none of the people on the flight were wearing life jackets.
Members of the Peruvian navy, air force and police searched with helicopters, boats and jet skis for the missing men throughout the day Sunday.
Authorities say the women survived because they stayed in the balloon’s basket, which floated. They have been taken to a naval hospital.
Balloon company manager Luis Fernandez says strong winds pushed the balloon off its planned route along the coast and out over the Pacific.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The Japan Meteorological Agency says a 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck off far northern Japan and far eastern Russia.
The tremor around midday Friday was in the Pacific Ocean at a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles.
The agency said sea changes were possible but no damage was expected.
The epicenter was 160 miles east-northeast of Kuril’sk, Russia, and 328 miles northeast of Nemuro, Japan.
The area is almost 930 miles northeast of Tokyo.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/3Gn7W8jInV4/
The Japan Meteorological Agency says a 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck off far northern Japan and far eastern Russia.
The tremor around midday Friday was in the Pacific Ocean at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).
The agency said sea changes were possible but no damage was expected.
The epicenter was 58 kilometers (160 miles) east-northeast of Kuril’sk, Russia, and 528 kilometers (328 miles) northeast of Nemuro, Japan.
The area is almost 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/Srd6XJozU2o/
(Phys.org) —NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Tuesday, April 16, to begin its final preparations for launch currently scheduled no earlier than May 28. IRIS will improve our understanding of how heat and energy move through the deepest levels of the sun’s atmosphere, thereby increasing our ability to forecast space weather. Following final checkouts, the IRIS spacecraft will be placed inside an Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket. Deployment of the Pegasus from the L-1011 carrier aircraft is targeted for 7:27 p.m. PDT at an altitude of 39,000 feet at a location over the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles northwest of Vandenberg AFB off the central coast of California south of Big Sur.
From the time coal is scooped from the depths of the Spring Creek strip mine in Montana’s wide-open Powder River Basin until it travels more than 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to power plants in South Korea, the price can increase more than fivefold.
Mining companies, however, are only paying government royalties on the price of the coal when it is mined from federal lands, not when it is sold for more overseas, saving them millions of dollars in the process.
As the Interior Department investigates the industry’s export practices and considers a new royalty system, several exporters in the Montana-Wyoming coal region — the nation’s most productive — are planning to increase shipments abroad to energy-hungry Asia.
Whatever the department decides on royalties, a matter currently under internal review, the results have the potential to cut into profits at a time when the industry is looking to foreign markets to offset some of the daunting challenges it faces at home.
Proposed ports on the West Coast have the potential to increase U.S. coal exports by 60 to 100 million tons a year, said Jim Rollyson, an energy analyst with the advisory firm Raymond James.
“The international export market is where long-term growth for the industry might come from,” Rollyson said. “If you’re the government, that’s real money you’re trying to get there.”
Federal officials forecast that 175 coal-burning power plant units will be shuttered in the next five years, equal to 8.5 percent of the total electricity produced by coal, largely because of competition from cheap natural gas and costs of complying with new environmental regulations.
Overseas markets, by contrast, have been booming.
While analysts expect demand to slip temporarily this year, 2012 saw a record 125 million tons of coal exported from the U.S. Some in the industry project that figure could double in just the next five years if new ports and port expansions are built in Washington state, Oregon and the Gulf Coast.
Federal officials declined to say what they’ve uncovered since the royalties investigation was announced in February. But they’ve said the probe will continue under the leadership of recently confirmed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
“We take this issue very seriously and remain fully committed to collecting every dollar due,” said Patrick Etchart with Interior’s Office of Natural Resource Revenue.
Among the major coal producers from federal lands in the West, Peabody Energy and Spring Creek owner Cloud Peak Energy have denied any wrongdoing, while Arch Coal, Inc., has declined to comment.
The investigation into the industry follows concerns raised by two prominent U.S. senators — Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and the committee’s ranking minority member, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
They’ve warned taxpayers could lose many millions of dollars annually if royalties are unfairly calculated. “Taxpayers deserve to know if Interior’s oversight and regulations have kept up” with the rise in exports, said Wyden spokesman Keith Chu.
Royalties currently are paid based on the mine price of coal — about $10.55 a ton in the Powder River Basin, kept low by the volume
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/XPevvQXZnLg/
Carnival Corp. says all maritime interests must assist without question those in trouble at sea, a duty that would not include reimbursing the U.S. government nearly $780,000 for costs associated with the rescue of the crippled Triumph cruise ship.
Carnival released letters Friday replying to an inquiry by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, about the Triumph stranding and the cruise line’s overall safety record. Among Rockefeller‘s questions was whether Carnival would repay the government for Coast Guard costs in the Triumph case as well as $3.4 million to the Coast Guard and Navy from the 2010 stranding of the Carnival Splendor in the Pacific Ocean.
“These costs must ultimately be borne by federal taxpayers,” Rockefeller said in his March letter, adding that Carnival appears to pay little or no federal income taxes.
In response, Carnival said its policy is to “honor maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community.” The cruise line noted that its ships frequently participate in rescues at the Coast Guard‘s request, including 11 times in the past year in Florida and Caribbean waters. It did not make direct reference to repaying any money.
In a statement, Rockefeller called the response “shameful” and that he is considering “all options to hold the industry to higher passenger safety standards.”
Those options could include a congressional hearing and legislation, perhaps even a closer look at taxation. Rockefeller’s letter asked Carnival whether the money it pays in taxes covers the costs of various federal benefits it receives, a question the cruise line again did not directly answer. It did mention port taxes and fees and other payments and said it paid $16.5 billion in wages to U.S. workers in 2011.
“Every state where our ships call or home port benefits from the dollars spent by cruise lines to buy products and retain services from local businesses,” Carnival added.
The exchange marked the latest chapter in the saga of the Triumph, which was disabled by an engine fire during a cruise in February in the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of passengers and crew had to endure five days at sea with no power and under squalid conditions while the 900-foot vessel was towed to Mobile, Ala., where it continues to undergo repairs.
Rockefeller had asked Carnival for details about 90 incidents aboard its ships that were filed with the Coast Guard in the past five years. Carnival responded that 83 were not considered serious under federal regulations. Three were the Triumph and Splendor mishaps and the capsizing of the Costa Concordia off Italy‘s coast, which killed 32 people in January 2012. The others were more minor ship collisions, an illness and one passenger who jumped off a ship.
The cruise line said it takes each incident “very seriously” and undergoes reviews and corrective measures when needed, such as a review of safety and emergency response practices across all of Carnival’s brands following the Concordia
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/qdQDdqQ3OUA/
Bone remains of Chilean Nobel literature laureate Pablo Neruda will be analyzed in the United States as investigators seek to resolve a four-decade mystery about his death.
Neruda’s body was exhumed this week in an effort to discover if he died from prostate cancer as was recorded, or if he was poisoned by agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet‘s bloody dictatorship, as his driver and others believe.
Rodolfo Reyes, one of Neruda’s nephews, met with Chilean and foreign forensics experts Friday and said some of the poet’s skeletal remains will be sent to a laboratory at the University of North Carolina medical school.
“They’re going to take some toxin tests at a laboratory,” Reyes said after confirming that a jacket and a belt inside the exhumed coffin belong to the poet.
“It’s a technical skill and we want them to take all the time in the world to do it and that it doesn’t leave a single doubt,” Reyes told Radio Cooperativa.
Judge Mario Carroza, who approved a request by Chile‘s Communist Party for the disinterment, said he will receive a preliminary report about tests performed in Chile on April 22.
The judge said he needs the report before he can order the return of Neruda’s casket to his home in Isla Negra, a rocky outcropping overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Neruda was also a leftist politician and would have been a strong voice in exile against Pinochet’s regime.
That ended with his death just 24 hours before he was to have escaped Chile in the chaos after the Sept. 11, 1973m military coup.
He was 69 and suffering from prostate cancer when he died 12 days after the coup that led his close friend, socialist President Salvador Allende, to kill himself rather than surrender to Pinochet’s troops attacking the presidential palace.
For long, the official version was that Neruda died of natural causes brought on by the trauma of witnessing the coup and the killing of many of his friends. But suspicions remained, even after Pinochet lost power and Chile returned to a democracy in 1990.
For years, Neruda’s driver and aide said dictatorship agents injected poison into
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/-Lxx6QQ2nMA/
John Kerry had been secretary of state for little more than a week when North Korea tested a nuclear bomb.
He gathered top aides together for a morning meeting and asked for ideas, prompting a conversation about how to get China to join the United States in putting pressure on Pyongyang, according to a senior administration official who was present. The debate encapsulates America’s struggle to come up with a strategy — based on sticks, carrots or a combination of both — to convince China to police its own backyard.
As Kerry heads to East Asia for his first time as America’s top diplomat, some progress has been made in convincing Beijing, North Korea‘s biggest benefactor, to start getting tough with its neighbor. The question is whether it will make a difference.
North Korea‘s government agency said Thursday that it has “powerful striking means” on standby for a launch, amid speculation in Seoul and Washington that North Korea will test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It was the latest warning from the North, which launched a long-range rocket in December and conducted an underground nuclear test in February.
For years, Washington has been putting its hopes in Beijing to rein in the provocative behavior and combative rhetoric from North Korea. China has more leverage over the North than any other country, having massively boosted trade ties with the isolated regime in recent years and maintaining close military relations.
But the U.S. has been frustrated by the reaction from a government that in many ways has different priorities. China, analysts and officials often say, fears the implosion of North Korea‘s impoverished state and the regional instability that would cause far more immediate damage than the North’s nuclear proliferation and missile program. And China remains wary of any enhanced U.S. involvement in its backyard.
“If anyone has real leverage over the North Koreans, it is China,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress Thursday. “And the indications that we have are that China is itself rather frustrated with the behavior and the belligerent rhetoric of … Kim Jong Un.”
China‘s role in containing North Korea is expected to be front and center when Kerry arrives in Seoul on Friday. He then travels to Beijing and Tokyo.
At a meeting Wednesday in London, Kerry
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/gGc3zkDlRvo/
North Korea delivered a fresh round of rhetoric Thursday with claims it had “powerful striking means” on standby for a launch, while Seoul and Washington speculated that the country is preparing to test a medium-range missile during upcoming national celebrations.
On the streets of Pyongyang, meanwhile, North Koreans celebrated the anniversary of leader Kim Jong Un‘s appointment to the country’s top party post — one in a slew of titles collected a year ago in the months after father Kim Jong Il‘s death.
The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a nonmilitary agency that deals with relations with South Korea, didn’t elaborate on its warning of a strike. The statement is the latest in a torrent of warlike threats seen outside Pyongyang as an effort to raise fears and pressure Seoul and Washington into changing their North Korea policy.
Officials in Seoul and Washington say Pyongyang appears to be preparing to test-fire a medium-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.
Such a launch would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting North Korea from nuclear and ballistic missile activity, and mark a major escalation in Pyongyang’s standoff with neighboring nations and the U.S.
North Korea already has been punished in recent months for launching a long-range rocket in December and conducting an underground nuclear test in February.
Analysts do not believe North Korea will stage an attack similar to the one that started the Korean War in 1950. But there are concerns that the animosity could spark a skirmish that could escalate into a serious conflict.
“North Korea has been, with its bellicose rhetoric, with its actions … skating very close to a dangerous line,” U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Washington on Wednesday. “Their actions and their words have not helped defuse a combustible situation.”
The missile that officials believe Pyongyang is readying has been dubbed the “Musudan” by foreign experts after the northeastern village where North Korea has a launch pad. The missile has a range of 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles) and is designed to reach U.S. military installments in Guam and Japan, experts say.
Bracing for a launch, officials said could take place at any time, Seoul deployed three naval destroyers, an early warning surveillance aircraft and a land-based radar system, a Defense Ministry official said in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department rules. Japan deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors around Tokyo.
But officials in Seoul played down security fears, noting that no foreign government has evacuated its citizens from either Korean capital.
“North Korea has continuously issued provocative threats and made efforts to raise tension on the Korean peninsula … but the current situation is being managed safely and our and foreign governments have been calmly responding,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young told reporters Thursday.
The war talk is seen as a way for North Korea to draw attention to the precariousness of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and to boost the military credentials of young leader Kim Jong Un.
The Korean War ended in
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/vyHIJWAEkc8/
By The Huffington Post News Editors
A tall barrier separates two worlds. To the south, a crowded Mexican border town. To the north, beyond a heavily patrolled no-man’s land, the lure of work and a better life in America.
The 2.5 meter (eight-foot) tall metal barrier has dramatically reduced the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border in the busy San Diego area, in the far southwestern United States.
Critics, however, say this has just forced the migrants to walk miles into the open desert to get around the wall, resulting in thousands of deaths.
Security along the 3,200 kilometer (2,000 mile) border with Mexico is a key factor in the debate over overhauling US immigration policy and figuring out what do with the 11 million people already living in the country illegally.
From a border hilltop near San Diego, the impact of the barrier is clear.
“Generations and generations of smugglers have lived in this area,” said Border Patrol agent Timothy Hamill as he gestures south to a working-class neighborhood in Tijuana, Mexico.
From the hilltop one can see the waves of the Pacific Ocean to the west. To the east, the fence crawls over rugged hills into the horizon.
The crow of roosters can be heard from the Mexican side. In one poor Tijuana neighborhood, La Libertad, frugal residents use the barrier as a wall for their humble homes.
Armed US Border Patrol agents in pine-green uniforms patrol the open strip of desert between the wall and a secondary chain link fence on the US side.
Giant banks of stadium lights illuminate the border strip at night. Agents monitor the area around the clock using 59 cameras on 14 observation towers.
As recently as 20 years ago migrants would cross the border in large groups.
But, starting in the 1990s, agents began to raise a barrier of welded steel panels along the busiest parts of the border.
In the San Diego area, the steel fence runs some 90 meters (300 feet) into the Pacific Ocean, then east for 45 miles. A secondary chain link fence topped with razor wire runs for 13 miles.
Detentions dropped from around 400,000 a year before the wall to 28,000 last year in the San Diego area alone, Hamill said, while authorities have increased their haul of captured illegal drugs nearly 65 percent since 2005.
Along the route Hamill points to signs of tunnels under the border that have been dug, and sealed, over the years, as well as various holes in the wall.
“The border is more secure than it has been in the past,” Hamill said. “But we definitely still have challenges to face. Protecting America is a very challenging mission and is very important to remain vigilant.”
— A deadly detour? —
Arrests may be down, but the undocumented migrants are still coming, says Enrique Morones, an activist with the group Border Angels.
The barrier and the increased security has meant a rising death toll among migrants who now make a wide detour into the desert to avoid detection.
Morones estimates there have been some 10,000 deaths along the whole border.
“Before they built the wall,
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Floating plastic debris—which helps populate the infamous “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the Pacific Ocean—has become a problem in the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world. Scientists reported on the latest findings from the Great Lakes here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
The United States announces it will send a missile defense system to Guam to defend the Pacific Ocean island from North Korea, as the US military adjusts to what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called a ‘real and clear danger’ from Pyongyang. Mana Rabi …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Space.com
(Phys.org) —Giant ancient corals off the coast of Madagascar have revealed that climate swings thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean have a major impact on rainfall variations in the Western Indian Ocean, adding new insight to managing water resources in a warming climate. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By The Huffington Post News Editors
SEOUL, April 4 (Reuters) – North Korea has moved what appears to be a mid-range Musudan missile to its east coast, South Korea‘s Yonhap news agency said on Thursday, quoting multiple government sources privy to intelligence from U.S. and South Korean authorities.
It was not clear if the missile was mounted with a warhead or whether the North was planning to fire it or was just putting it on display as a show of force, one South Korean government source was quoted as saying.
“South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have obtained indications the North has moved an object that appears to be a mid-range missile to the east coast,” the source said.
The Musudan missile is believed to have a range of 3,000 km (1,875 miles) or more, which would put all of South Korea and Japan in range and possibly also the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. North Korea is not believed to have tested these mid-range missiles, according to most independent experts
South Korea‘s defence ministry declined to comment.
North Korea has threatened a nuclear strike on the United States and missile attacks on its Pacific bases, including in Guam. Those threats followed new U.N. sanctions imposed on the North after it carried out its third nuclear test in February.
The missile was moved to the coast by train. The North has a missile launch site on the northeastern coast, which it has used to unsuccessfully test-fire long-range rockets in the past.
The Yonhap report did not say if the missile had been moved to the missile site.
Japan‘s Asahi Shimbun newspaper issued a similar report on Thursday, saying the North had moved what appeared to be a long-range missile to its east coast. (Reporting by Jack Kim, Editing by Dean Yates)
Read More…
More on North Korea
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Long-life batteries and satellite tagging have been used to fill in the blanks of female white sharks’ (Carcharodon carcharias) lifestyles. Research published in the launch edition of BioMed Central’s open access journal Animal Biotelemetry defines a two year migratory pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Pregnant females travel between the mating area at Guadalupe Island and nursery in Baja California, putting them and their young at risk from commercial fishing. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
The Earth is dynamic. What we perceive as solid ground beneath our feet, is in reality constantly changing. In the space of a year Africa and America are drifting apart at the back of the Middle Atlantic for some centimeters while the floor of the Pacific Ocean is subducted underneath the South American Continent. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
By The Huffington Post News Editors
MOSCOW — A Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts successfully docked Friday with the International Space Station, bringing the size of the crew at the orbiting lab to six.
Chris Cassidy of the United States and Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin traveled six hours in the capsule before linking up with the space station’s Russian Rassvet research module over the Pacific Ocean, just off Peru.
By Michelle Doucette, Contributor
Surfing has been a quintessential San Diego experience for generations—The Beach Boys sang about it, Tom Wolfe wrote about it and Andy Warhol filmed it. With San Diego’s 70 miles of shoreline and endless supply of sunshine, it’s no wonder surfing remains a huge draw for locals and visitors alike. As the Pacific Ocean begins to warm up for prime surfing season, our Startle.com team shares the best places to stay, lessons to take and things to see on your San Diego surfing vacation. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
