Faulty readings ahead of 2009 Air France crash

Confronted with faulty instrument readings and alarms going off in the cockpit, the pilots of an Air France jetliner struggled to tame the aircraft as it went into an aerodynamic stall, rolled, and finally plunged 38,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean in just 3½ minutes.
But the passengers on that doomed Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight were probably asleep or nodding off and didn't realize what was going on as the aircraft fell nose-up toward the sea, the director of the French accident investigating bureau said after releasing preliminary black-box data on the June 1, 2009, disaster.
All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 died.
The brief, highly technical report by the BEA contains only selective remarks from the cockpit recorder, offers no analysis and assigns no blame. It also does not answer the key question: What caused the crash?
But several experts familiar with the report said the co-pilot at the controls, at 32 the youngest of the three-man cockpit crew, Cedric Bonin, may have responded incorrectly to the emergency by pointing the nose upward, perhaps because he was confused by the incorrect readings.
The plane's external speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, have long been considered a likely culprit in the disaster, with experts suggesting they may have been iced over. And the BEA investigators found that two sets of instruments on the plane gave different speed readings, with the discrepancies lasting less than a minute.
Since the accident, Air France has replaced the speed monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.
An official at Airbus said the aircraft's nose should have been pointed slightly downward to enable the plane to regain lift after it had gone into an aerodynamic stall.
"This is part of the general pilot training for any aircraft," said the official. He was not authorized to speak on that subject and asked not to be identified by name.
Other aviation experts concurred. In an aerodynamic stall, a plane most often loses lift because it is traveling too slowly, and begins to fall out of the sky. Pointing the nose downward enables the aircraft to pick up speed, gain lift and pull out of the stall.
Pulling the nose up is "an inappropriate way to respond" to an aerodynamic stall, said Paul Hayes, director of air safety for aviation consulting firm Ascend Worldwide Ltd. "He either misidentified what was happening or became confused."
He cautioned that Friday's report was brief and that it was still unclear how the series of events started.
The flight data recorder and cockpit recorder were dredged from the ocean in early May, along with some bodies.
They showed, in addition to inconsistent speed readings, two co-pilots working methodically to right the plane manually after autopilot stopped. Captain Marc Dubois returned from a routine rest to the cockpit amid what moments later became an irretrievably catastrophic situation.
After the plane went into a stall, warnings sounded, the autopilot and autothrust shut off as designed, and the co-pilot not at the controls "tried several times to call the captain back," the BEA report said. The captain returned one minute and 10 seconds later, when the plane had climbed to 38,000 feet.
"During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped," the report said, but added that the plane never came out of its aerodynamic stall.
"The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees," the report said. The engines never stopped operating and "always responded to crew commands," the BEA said.
"The pilots never panicked," BEA director Jean-Paul Troadec said on RTL radio, adding that they maintained professionalism throughout.
The passengers, he suggested, probably fell to their deaths without knowing they were doomed.
Dinner had been served and "you can imagine that most passengers were already asleep or nodding off," Troadec said. He said the cabin crew never contacted the cockpit to see what might be wrong.
"It seems they didn't feel more movements and turbulence than you generally feel in storms, so we think that till impact they did not realize the situation," said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, president of a victims' solidarity association, "which for the family is what they want to hear, they did not suffer."
He was among a group of representatives of families who met with BEA officials to be briefed on their findings.
At least one expert disagreed with the theory of a soft descent.
Data from the flight recorders shows the plane was falling almost 11,000 feet per minute (124 mph, or 200 kilometers per hour), its nose slightly tilted upward.
"Eleven-thousand feet a minute is a huge rate of descent," said Ronan Hubert, who runs the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva. "I would say some of the people on board would have lost consciousness."
The crew had feared turbulence, and more than eight minutes before the crash the co-pilot at the controls advised the cabin crew "you should watch out" for turbulence ahead. He said the plane could not climb out of the cloud layer where the turbulence was happening because it was not cold enough.
Turbulence caused the pilots to make a slight change of course, but was not excessive as the plane tried to pass through the clouds.
Four minutes later, the plane's autopilot and autothrust shut off, the stall alarm sounded twice and the co-pilot at the controls took over manual control. A second co-pilot, David Robert, 37, was also in the cockpit.
Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns resting to remain alert. After Dubois returned to the cockpit, he did not take back the controls.
Just over two minutes before the crash, Bonin is heard to say, "I don't have any more indications." Robert says: "We have no valid indications."
Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said the atmosphere in the darkened cockpit would have been chaotic: lights flashing, loud alarms, frequent messages.
He compared the pilots to emergency-room doctors struggling with a sudden influx of seriously injured patients: They were bombarded with problems that they had to quickly prioritize.
On top of that, they were completely dependent on the information the plane's computers gave them.
"You have to rely on your instruments," Barr said. "That's why when the instruments aren't telling you the truth, you have a hard time deciding what to do. Which ones are right and which ones are wrong?"
Air France said in a statement that, based on the report, it appears "the initial problem was the failure of the speed probes which led to the disconnection of the autopilot" and loss of pilot protection systems.
The airline defended the captain, saying he "quickly interrupted his rest period to regain the cockpit."
Independent aviation analyst Chris Yates said the report appears "to raise more questions than it answers."
"It would seem to me, reading between the lines, that the cockpit crew weren't confident of the information that was being presented to them on the data displays," Yates said. "Maybe — and it's only a maybe — they took some action that led to the stall warning, and the plane stalling and then being unable to correct it."
A new, but not final, report with some analysis is to be issued in July.

New leak feared at stricken Japan nuclear plant

Radioactive water appears to be leaking from a waste disposal building at Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex, operator Tokyo Electric Power said on Thursday, in a new setback to the battle to contain radiation from the crippled power plant.
The disclosure by Tepco raises the stakes in a race to complete by next month a system to decontaminate a massive pool of radioactive water at the site that critics see as a growing risk to both the nearby Pacific and groundwater.
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the massive tsunami that followed killed about 24,000 people and knocked out the Fukushima plant on March 11, triggering the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
The crisis, which has displaced some 80,000 residents from around the plant, prompted a review of Japan's energy policy and growing calls for efforts to step up health monitoring for a crisis now in its 11th week.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency began an inspection on Thursday of equipment damaged by the tsunami at a second nuclear plant, the Tokai complex about 120 km (75 miles) north of Tokyo, as part of an investigation prompted by the Fukushima accident.
A poll by the Asahi newspaper published on Thursday showed that 42 percent of Japanese people opposed nuclear power, up from 18 percent before the disaster.
The survey underscored the public's deepening concerns about nuclear safety and criticism of the way the government and Tepco initially responded to the crisis and how they appeared to have been repeatedly slow in admitting the gravity of the situation.
Although many outside experts had concluded that uranium fuel in three Fukushima reactors had melted down within days of the crisis, Tepco only announced that conclusion this week.
"We have to take seriously the criticism that we haven't done enough to provide and circulate information," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a news conference. "But we have never covered up information that we had."
POSSIBLE LEAK
The effort to regain control of the plant relies on pumping massive quantities of water to cool the three reactors that suffered meltdowns and storing the contaminated water in an improvised storage facility. Tepco officials said, however, that the water level in the storage facility had dropped, suggesting a leak.
Environmental groups have focused on the threat to sea and ground water from the accident. Greenpeace said earlier this month it had collected samples of fish, seaweed and shellfish along the Fukushima coast that showed radiation levels above Japanese safety limits.
Residents of the town of Futaba, forced to evacuate along with others inside a 20-kilometre (12-mile) zone around the plant, were allowed to return briefly to their homes on Wednesday.
A day earlier, residents of the nearby town of Minami Soma had been allowed back to their homes for a two-hour visit wearing hooded white protective suits, masks and goggles.
Video shot by a couple returning home and broadcast on Japanese television showed a ghost town with weeds overrunning a garden and a stray dog barking in the distance.
"It didn't even feel like my own home," one woman told Nippon Television. "I thought I was prepared for that, but I wasn't."

Volcanic cloud heads to Scotland, flights canceled

A dense ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano blew toward Scotland, causing airlines to cancel Tuesday flights, forcing President Barack Obama to shorten a visit to Ireland, and raising fears of a repeat of last year's huge travel disruptions in Europe that stranded millions of passengers.
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said it appears that ash from the Grimsvotn (GREEMSH-votn) volcano could reach Scottish airspace early Tuesday and affect other parts of the U.K. and Ireland later in the week.
British Airways suspended all its flights for Tuesday morning between London and Scotland, while Dutch carrier KLM and Easyjet canceled flights to and from Scotland and northern England at the same time. Three domestic airlines also announced flight disruptions.
Still, authorities say they don't expect the kind of massive grounding of flights that followed last year's eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland because systems and procedures have been improved since then and the cloud is currently not expected to move over continental Europe.
Pilots unions, however, expressed concerns that the ash could still be dangerous.
Obama, who had been scheduled to spend Monday night in Ireland, was forced to fly to London early because of the ash cloud — he landed at the capital's Stansted Airport late Monday. Last year's Icelandic eruption also forced a change in his schedule then, causing him to cancel a trip to Poland.
Glasgow-based regional airline Loganair canceled 36 Scottish flights scheduled for Tuesday morning, as well as some flights to Birmingham and Belfast. It said its flights between Scottish islands would be unaffected. Two other British regional airlines, Flybe and Eastern Airways, also canceled flights to and from Scotland on Tuesday.
"Due to predictions on the movement of the volcanic ash, we are anticipating the cancellation of flights tomorrow morning and disruption to many more services," a spokesman for Edinburgh Airport said.
Andrew Haines, chief executive of the CAA, said the first priority is ensuring the safety of people both onboard aircraft and on the ground.
"We can't rule out disruption, but the new arrangements that have been put in place since last year's ash cloud mean the aviation sector is better prepared and will help to reduce any disruption in the event that volcanic ash affects U.K. airspace."
Many airlines said authorities last year overestimated the danger to planes and overreacted by closing airspace for five days amid fears that the abrasive ash could cause engines to stall.
CAA spokesman Jonathan Nicholson said authorities this time would give airlines information about the location and density of ash clouds. Any airline that wanted to fly would have to present a safety report to aviation authorities in order to be allowed to fly.
He said most British airlines had permission to fly through medium-density ash clouds, but none had asked for permission to fly through high-density clouds, classified as having over 4,000 micrograms of ash per cubic meter.
Even at that concentration of volcanic ash, experts said the air would not look much different from airspace unaffected by the ash, but officials say the tiny particles in the ash can sandblast windows and stop jet engines.
The international pilots' federation warned that it believed the cloud still presented a potential danger to commercial aircraft despite developments since last year.
"It remains our view that when there is an unknown then it is always better to err on the side of caution," said Gideon Ewers, spokesman for the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations.
Thurai Rahulan, a senior lecturer in aeronautics at Salford University in northwest England, said the technology on how to measure and monitor ash has improved, but aircrafts' ability to cope with ash has not changed.
"Aircraft manufacturers have made more resources available to conduct studies on tolerating higher concentrations of ash, but as far as I know, no possible improvements have yet made it to front line operations yet," he said.
The disruption in Scotland is being caused by the smaller of two ash clouds from the volcano. The main cloud was causing minor disruptions around Scandinavia.
Iceland's main airport, Keflavik, and domestic airport Reykjavik both reopened Monday after being closed for almost 36 hours. Grimsvotn began erupting Saturday.
Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, spokeswoman for the airport administrator Isavia, said the first flight to take off would be an Icelandair flight to London Heathrow.
"The outlook is good for Keflavik and other Icelandic airports in the coming 24 hours," said Gudmundsdottir. "We don't have a forecast for after that so we wait and see."
The Met Office, Britain's weather forecasters, said there have been no major changes in the forecast — that some ash will drift across U.K. airspace, mostly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, by Tuesday morning.
But the weather in the U.K. has been very unsettled in the past two days and will continue to be that way in the days ahead, making predictions difficult.
"When it's all over the place, it's a bit trickier to predict where things may go," said forecaster Charlie Powell.
An Icelandic meteorological official said the eruption already appeared to be getting smaller, but Thierry Mariani, France's transport minister, said it was too early to tell whether air travel over Europe would be affected by the eruption.
Mariani told Europe 1 radio that the composition of the cloud will be examined in the coming days and if the ash is found to be harmful to airplanes, countries may take a joint decision to close part of Europe's airspace.
"The priority must always remain to ensure security," he said.
U.K. Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond told the BBC that Britain had equipment in Iceland analyzing the ash as it comes out of the volcano, and equipment in the U.K. that analyzes the density of the ash.
"We won't see a blanket closing of airspace," he said.
The plume was drifting mostly southward at a height of 5 kilometers to 9 kilometers (16,404 feet to 29,528 feet), the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a report late Monday. Those are the normal altitudes for passenger airliners, and the plume was down from a maximum height of 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) Sunday, said Steinunn Jakobsdottir, a geophysicist at the forecaster.
The eruption has abated slightly since Sunday and no earthquakes have been recorded at the site since then, the forecaster said.
The European air traffic control agency's models showed the main plume of ash gradually extending northward from Iceland in the next two days. The cloud is predicted to arch its way north of Scandinavia and possibly touch the islands off the northern Russian coastline within the next two days.
Eurocontrol said the smaller ash plume was not expected to move farther east than the west coast of Scotland.
Some airline chiefs complained that regulators had overreacted by shutting much of Europe's airspace last year, stranding millions of passengers and causing big losses to airlines. But a study last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded the shutdown had been justified.
The possibility of disruption appeared to be affecting airline shares, which fell more than the market average. IAG, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia, closed down 5.1 percent on the day while Lufthansa shed 3.5 percent and Air France KLM fell 4.5 percent.

Judgment Day forecaster points to new doomsday date

The evangelical Christian broadcaster whose much-ballyhooed Judgment Day prophecy went conspicuously unfulfilled on Saturday has a simple explanation for what went wrong -- he miscalculated.
Instead of the world physically coming to an end on May 21 with a great, cataclysmic earthquake, as he had predicted, Harold Camping, 89, said he now believes his forecast is playing out "spiritually," with the actual apocalypse set to occur five months later, on October 21.
Camping, who launched a doomsday countdown in which some followers spent their life's savings in anticipation of being swept into heaven, issued his correction during an appearance on his "Open Forum" radio show from Oakland, California.
The headquarters of Camping's Family Radio network of 66 U.S. stations had been shuttered over the weekend with a sign on the door that read, "This Office is Closed. Sorry we missed you!"
During a sometimes rambling, 90-minute discourse that included a question-and-answer session with reporters, Camping said he felt bad that Saturday had come and gone without the Rapture he had felt so certain would take place.
Reflecting on scripture afterward, Camping said it "dawned" on him that a "merciful and compassionate God" would spare humanity from "hell on Earth for five months" by compressing the physical apocalypse into a shorter time frame.
But he insisted that October 21 has always been the end-point of his own End Times chronology, or at least, his latest chronology.
The tall, gaunt former civil engineer with a deep voice and prominent ears has been wrong before. More than two decades ago, he publicly acknowledged a failed 1994 prophecy of Christ's return to Earth.
To publicize his latest pronouncement, the Family Radio network posted over 2,000 billboards around the country declaring that Judgment Day was at hand, and believers carried the message on placards in shopping malls and street corners.
Asked what advice he would give to followers who gave up much or all of their worldly possessions in the belief that his Judgment Day forecast would come true, Camping drew a comparison to the nation's recent economic slump.
"We just had a great recession. There's lots of people who lost their jobs, lots of people who lost their houses ... and somehow they all survived," he said.
"People cope, he added. "We're not in the business of giving any financial advice. We're in the business of telling people maybe there is someone you can talk to, and that's God."

Deadly Super Tornado devastates Joplin, Missouri, 89 dead

A monster tornado nearly a mile (1.5 km) wide killed at least 89 people in Joplin, Missouri when it tore through the heart of the small Midwestern city, ripping the roof off a hospital and destroying thousands of homes and businesses, local officials said on Monday.
U.S. weather officials said the tornado that hit at dinnertime on Sunday may have been the single deadliest in the country since 1953.
Rescue crews from throughout the region worked all night and battled a driving rain and thunder storm on Monday morning in the town of about 50,000 people, searching for anyone still alive in the rubble.
More than 500 people were confirmed injured, many with massive internal injuries, officials said. The number of dead and injured was expected to climb as rescue workers dig through collapsed homes and businesses.
A number of bodies were found along the city's "restaurant row," on the main commercial street and a local nursing home took a direct hit, Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges said.



At St. Johns Hospital in Joplin, 180 patients cowered as the fierce winds blew out windows and pulled off the roof. Others took refuge in restaurant coolers, huddled in closets, or just ran for their lives.
Roaring along a path nearly six miles (9.5 km) long and about 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile (1 km) wide, it flattened whole neighborhoods, splintered trees, flipped cars and trucks upside down and into each other. Some 2,000 homes and many other businesses, schools and other buildings were destroyed.
An estimated 20,000 homes and businesses were without power on Monday morning.
"It is a significant tragedy," said Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. "We're working on all cylinders. We've got to get an active and complete search ... to make sure if there is anyone still alive in the rubble that we get them out."
The city's residents were given about 20 minutes notice when 25 warning sirens sounded throughout the southwest Missouri town around 6 p.m. CDT, said Jasper County Emergency Management Director Keith Stammers.
But the governor said many people likely were unable to get to shelter in time. "The bottom line was the storm was so loud you probably couldn't hear the sirens going off." He declared a state of emergency and called out the Missouri National Guard to help.
The tornado in southwestern Missouri was the latest in a string of powerful twisters that has wreaked death and devastation across many states, and it comes as much of the Mississippi River valley is underwater from record flooding.
Twisters killed more than 300 people and did more than $2 billion in damages across southern states last month, killing more than 200 in Alabama alone.
COLLECTING BODIES
"The loss of life is incredible," said Joplin Mayor Mike Woolston. "We're still trying to find people. The outlook is pretty bleak."
Two refrigerated trucks were brought in to serve as a make-shift morgue at a local university and more were being brought in to handle the additional bodies expected, the coroner said.
"I would be surprised if we don't find more today," Bridges said, though he declined to speculate about how many more victims might be found. Multiple victims were taken from several locations around the city, including a nursing home.
"I haven't got any kind of real numbers on who is missing right now," said Bridges. "People ... have been pouring in looking for loved ones and they can't find them, looking for friends, can't find them. I'm just really concerned that there is going to be a number more."
Joplin City Councilwoman Melodee Colbert-Kean, who serves as vice mayor, said the town was in a state of "chaos."
"It is just utter devastation anywhere you look to the south and the east -- businesses, apartment complexes, houses, cars, trees, schools, you name it, it is leveled, leveled," she said.
President Barack Obama called the governor Sunday evening to "extend his condolences" to the families of Joplin. White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said Federal Emergency Management Agency head Craig Fugate was on his way to Joplin to help with recovery.
The tornado in Joplin was one of a string over the weekend.
On Saturday night, a tornado ripped through Reading, Kansas, killing one and damaging 200 homes and businesses. Another person was killed in a tornado in Minneapolis on Sunday.
The storms that hit Joplin continued a path of destruction eastward through the Ohio Valley region, bringing golf ball-sized hail and 50 mile-per-hour winds to Tennessee, knocking down trees and power lines and stripping roofs from building.



HUDDLED IN RESTAURANT COOLER
Sharon Hurtt 60, and Bill Dearing, 59, had no basement to flee to when the tornado descended on their single-story home, so they huddled in a closet between two bedrooms. Within minutes, the roof was gone and powerful winds ripped the door off the closet.
"We were holding on to keep from blowing away," said Hurtt.
A mattress blown off the bed somehow became wedged in the doorway.
"It probably saved us," said Hurtt.
When the couple emerged, the daycare center next door was gone and mangled cars and other debris littered their yard.
Carla Tabares said she, her husband and several families with children squeezed into the kitchen cooler of an Outback Steakhouse restaurant when the twister neared, huddling in the chilly darkness until the howling of the storm passed.
"It was really awful, really scary," she said. The restaurant was largely unscathed, but other buildings were badly damaged. "I'm just thankful we got out alive, and I really feel sorry for the people who didn't."
Joplin-area resident Denise Bayless, 57, said she and her husband were at church when their adult son called to say the tornado was hitting his house. The couple got in their car to race to his aid.
"We just had to weave in and out of debris. Power lines were down everywhere, and you could smell gas," she said.
After stopping to assist a woman they heard screaming, trapped inside her home, Bayless said she ran five blocks to her son's house, where she found every home on the street -- some 20 dwellings including his -- were gone.
"I just lost all my bearings. There was nothing that looked familiar," said Bayless, whose son was unhurt.
Leslie Swatosh, 22, ducked into a liquor store with several others as the tornado descended on them. The group huddled on the floor holding onto each other, and prayed.
"We were getting hit by rocks and I don't even know what hit me," said Swatosh. When the tornado passed, the store was destroyed but those inside were all alive, she said.
"Everyone in that store was blessed. There was nothing of that store left," said Swatosh.

Predictor of May 21 doomsday to watch it on TV

The U.S. evangelical broadcaster predicting that Judgment Day will come on Saturday says he expects to stay close to a TV or radio to monitor the unfolding apocalypse.
Harold Camping, 89, previously made a failed prediction that Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.
But the head of the Christian radio network Family Stations Inc says he is sure an earthquake will shake the Earth on May 21, sweeping true believers to heaven and leaving others behind to be engulfed in the world's destruction over a few months.
"We know without any shadow of a doubt it is going to happen," said Camping, whose Family Radio broadcasts in more than 30 languages and on U.S. and international stations.
His supporters have posted about 2,200 billboards around the United States about the coming apocalypse, and dozens of followers are driving across the country to spread the news.
Volunteers also handed out pamphlets warning about May 21 as far away as the Philippines, telling people God had left clear signs the world was coming to an end.
Camping, a civil engineer who ran his own construction business before turning to evangelism, told Reuters he planned to spend May 21 with his wife and watch the doomsday unfold.
"I'll probably try to be very near a TV or a radio or something," he said. "I'll be interested in what's happening on the other side of the world as this begins."
Like his last prediction, Camping's doomsday date is based on his reading of the Bible and a timeline dating back to ancient events including the Biblical flood survived by Noah.
Camping's pronouncement of a specific date for the apocalypse puts him outside the Christian mainstream.
But his contention that the souls of believers will leave their bodies and enter heaven in a rapture is a central tenet within many Christian churches.
Stephen O'Leary, an expert in religious communication at the University of Southern California, said the idea of rapture first appeared in Christian teaching in the 19th century.
"It is very appealing to people," said Barbara Rossing, professor of the New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago who describes "an enormous end-times prophecy industry" including video games, board games, books and more.
Tom Evans, a spokesman for Camping, said at least several tens of thousands of people listen to Family Radio's message.
One of those is Allison Warden, 29, of Raleigh, North Carolina, who most recently worked as a payroll clerk for an Ohio company and now runs the end-times website Wecanknow.com.
"My boss does not agree with this but has been very understanding and supportive," she said. "He thinks next week I'll be back to work like normal."

Apocalypse almost: World waits for Rapture

Warnings by a US fundamentalist preacher that Saturday is Judgment Day have sent some people into hiding or scrambling to repent, while others are planning parties to wave off good Christians.
Eighty-nine-year-old tele-evangelist Harold Camping's prophecy says the Rapture will begin with powerful earthquakes at 6:00 pm local time in each of the world's regions, after which the good will be beamed up to heaven.
The not-so-good will suffer through hell on earth until October 21, when God will pull the plug on the planet once and for all, he predicts.
In the United States, where Camping's evangelizing organization is based, some people have been quitting their jobs and hitting the road to urge others to repent before it's too late.
Gregory LeCorps left his job "in a medical facility" weeks ago to take his wife and five young children on the road and warn others that the Rapture is really nigh, the Journal News in New York wrote.
"We're in the final days," LeCorps, who said he hopes to be on a beach in South Carolina by Saturday, was quoted by the lower Hudson valley newspaper as saying as he handed out leaflets.
In Vietnam, thousands of ethnic Hmong converged on northwestern Dien Bien province a few weeks ago after hearing broadcasts on Camping's global religious broadcasting network, Family Radio, that Jesus was coming on May 21.
Hundreds are believed hiding in forests after security forces dispersed those who were awaiting the supposed return of Jesus Christ on Saturday, a resident told AFP.
The Vietnamese government said extremists used the gathering to advocate for a Hmong kingdom but the resident said he was unaware of such talk.
In Ciudad Juarez, one of the hardest hit cities in Mexico's drug wars, huge billboards proclaim that "Christ is coming back on May 21."
According to the authorities, the apocalyptic message hasn't provoked panic or hoarding, but one resident, Rosy Alderete, said she was "worried by the coincidence" that big earthquakes have rocked Japan and New Zealand this year.
The London-based Guardian newspaper described the looming Rapture as "the fundamentalist Christian equivalent of the last helicopter out of Saigon," referring to the US pull-out after the long Vietnam war in 1975.
The fact that Camping wrongly predicted the end of the world once before, in 1994, has left others willing to make fun of him.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- who is Jewish and therefore, according to Camping's prophecy, unlikely to be beamed up to sit alongside Jesus and God in heaven -- said on his weekly radio show Friday that he would suspend alternate-side parking in New York if the world ends on Saturday.
The much-reviled parking rule requires New Yorkers to move their cars from one side of the street to the other to allow street cleaning to be carried out.
And some are cashing in on money-making opportunities.
Craigslist was running tens of thousands of ads from non-believers offering to buy the worldly goods of those who think they're going to heaven, while a group of US atheists has sold hundreds of contracts to rescue people's pets.
A group of Christians, who think Camping's prophecy is bunk, will be tracking the Rapture and posting reports on the Internet each time it doesn't happen.
One of the first places to be hit, according to Camping, would be New Zealand, where 6:00 pm happens at 0600 GMT, but the prophecy received little local media attention.
Mark Vrankovich, director of the Christian organisation Cultwatch, said he was not aware of any New Zealanders preparing for the end of the world.
"Do not sell your house and give the money away, do not stop paying bills, do not say anything you will regret to friends and family, don't quit your job, don't leave your loved ones," the Cultwatch website advises.
If Camping's prediction does not pan out, one idea is gathering steam on Twitter to create an ersatz Rapture.
A tweet suggests laying out old clothing and shoes on pavements and lawns on Saturday to give the impression that someone has indeed been beamed up.

Is the Rocky Alien Planet Gliese 581d Really Habitable?

A rocky alien planet called Gliese 581d may be the first known world beyond Earth capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study suggests.
Astronomers performing a new atmospheric-modeling study have found that the planet likely lies in the "habitable zone" of its host star — that just-right range of distances that allow liquid water to exist. The alien world could be Earth-like in key ways, harboring oceans, clouds and rainfall, according to the research.
This conclusion is consistent with several other recent modeling studies. But it does not definitively establish that life-sustaining water flows across the planet's surface.
The new study assumes that Gliese 581d, which is about seven times as massive as Earth, has a thick, carbon-dioxide-based atmosphere. That's very possible on a planet so large, researchers said, but it's not a given. [Video: Life-Sustaining "Super Earth" Gliese 581d]
The Gliese 581 system: Worlds of possibilities
Gliese 581d's parent star, known as Gliese 581, is a red dwarf located 20 light-years from Earth, just a stone's throw in the cosmic scheme of things. So far, astronomers have detected six planets orbiting the star, and Gliese 581d is not the only one intriguing to scientists thinking about the possibility of life beyond Earth.
Another planet in the system, called Gliese 581g, is about three times as massive as Earth, and it's also most likely a rocky world. This planet received a lot of attention when its discovery was announced in September 2010, because it's located right in the middle of the habitable zone. That makes 581g a prime candidate for liquid water and life as we know it — if the planet exists.
Some researchers question the analysis used to discover the planet, and say they cannot confirm 581g in follow-up studies. The planet's discoverers, however, are standing by their find. [The Strangest Alien Planets]
Gliese 581d orbits outside of 581g, far enough away from its star that researchers first thought it too cold for life when it was originally discovered in 2007. But a strong greenhouse effect may warm 581d up substantially, perhaps enough to support liquid water.
That's the tentative conclusion of the new study, as well as several other recent studies by different research teams that also modeled Gliese 581d's possible atmosphere.
Modeling an alien atmosphere
The planet Gliese 581d receives less than a third of the solar energy that Earth does from our sun, and it may be tidally locked (a situation in which one side of the world always faces its sun — a permanent day — and the other faces away, producing eternal night).
After Gliese 581d's discovery, it was generally believed that any atmosphere thick enough to keep the planet warm would become cold enough on the night side to freeze out entirely, ruining any prospects for a habitable climate, researchers said.
The research team tested that possibility in the new study, developing a new kind of computer model that simulates alien planets' atmospheres and surfaces in three dimensions. The model is similar to those used to study climate change on Earth.
When the team ran the model, they found that Gliese 581d probably can indeed host liquid water if it has a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. Even though the planet is relatively far away from its dim red dwarf parent star, it could be warmed by a greenhouse effect, with daytime heat circulated around the planet by the atmosphere.
The team, led by scientists from the Laboratoire de Métrologie Dynamique (CNRS/UPMC/ENS/Ecole Polytechnique) at the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, published their results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The work remains speculative.
To determine conclusively if Gliese 581d is truly habitable, future work will probably have to detect and characterize its atmosphere directly. And that is likely years off, since it requires the development of new and advanced telescopes. Human-made probes won't be getting to the planet anytime soon; with current technology, it would take spacecraft hundreds of thousands of years to make the 20-light-year trek.

Worker at Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear plant dies

A man died on his second day of work at Japan's tsunami-wrecked nuclear power plant Saturday, and the plant operator said harmful levels of radiation were not detected in his body.
The contract worker in his 60s was the first person to die at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan since March 11, when an earthquake and tsunami damaged the facility and caused fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the world's second-worst nuclear accident.
The worker was carrying equipment when he collapsed and died later in a hospital, said Naoyuki Matsumoto, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. The company does not know the cause of his death, Matsumoto said.
The man had been wearing a radiation protection suit, mask and gloves while working at the plant's waste disposal building, which stores radioactive-contaminated water that has leaked from the tsunami-crippled reactors.
Kyodo News agency reported the man had no apparent injuries and a second worker nearby had no ill health effects.
Two Fukushima workers had died from the tsunami itself, when waves swept into the plant and heavily damaged buildings and equipment. TEPCO said those workers, both in their early 20s, were found in the basement of a turbine building.
The quake and tsunami are believed to have killed more than 24,500 people. Police said Friday that 15,019 were dead and 9,506 were still listed as missing.
Radiation leaks at the Fukushima plant have forced 80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the nuclear facility to leave their homes for an indefinite time.
The nuclear crisis prompted the government to evaluate all of Japan's 54 reactors for quake and tsunami vulnerability, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked that one plant in central Japan halt operations while its defenses were improved.
Chubu Electric said its Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka was completely shut down Saturday on the premier's request. The company will build a large seawall and other safety structures — work expected to take a few years.

Strong earthquake strikes off Papua New Guinea

A strong earthquake struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The magnitude-6.5 quake struck 76 miles (122 kilometers) west of Arawa, the capital of Bougainville province, at a depth of 27 miles (43 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a destructive, widespread tsunami and that sea-level gauges in the region showed no unusual wave activity. But the agency did say earthquakes of this size can sometimes generate tsunamis along coasts within 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the epicenter.
Bill Yomba, an official with Papua New Guinea's National Disaster Center, said there were no reports of any tsunamis striking the coast or of any injuries or damage.
Earthquakes of this magnitude are relatively common in Papua New Guinea. The country lies on the "Ring of Fire" — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim and where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur.

Quake shifted Japan and towns now flood at high tide

When water begins to trickle down the streets of her coastal neighborhood, Yoshiko Takahashi knows it is time to hurry home.
Twice a day, the flow steadily increases until it is knee-deep, carrying fish and debris by her front door and trapping people in their homes. Those still on the streets slosh through the sea water in rubber boots or on bicycle.
"I look out the window, and it's like our houses are in the middle of the ocean," says Takahashi, who moved in three years ago.
The March 11 earthquake that hit eastern Japan was so powerful it pulled the entire country out and down into the sea. The mostly devastated coastal communities now face regular flooding, because of their lower elevation and damage to sea walls from the massive tsunamis triggered by the quake.
In port cities such as Onagawa and Kesennuma, the tide flows in and out among crumpled homes and warehouses along now uninhabited streets.
A cluster of neighborhoods in Ishinomaki city is rare in that it escaped tsunami damage through fortuitous geography. So, many residents still live in their homes, and they now face a daily trial: The area floods at high tide, and the normally sleepy streets turn frantic as residents rush home before the water rises too high.
"I just try to get all my shopping and chores done by 3 p.m.," says Takuya Kondo, 32, who lives with his family in his childhood home.
Most houses sit above the water's reach, but travel by car becomes impossible and the sewage system swamps, rendering toilets unusable.
Scientists say the new conditions are permanent.
Japan's northern half sits on the North American tectonic plate. The Pacific plate, which is mostly undersea, normally slides under this plate, slowly nudging the country west. But in the earthquake, the fault line between the two plates ruptured, and the North American plate slid up and out along the Pacific plate.
The rising edge of plate caused the sea floor off Japan's eastern coast to bulge up — one measuring station run by Tohoku University reported an underwater rise of 16 feet (5 meters) — creating the tsunami that devastated the coast. The portion of the plate under Japan was pulled lower as it slid toward the ocean, which caused a corresponding plunge in elevation under the country.
Some areas in Ishinomaki moved southeast 17 feet (5.3 meters) and sank 4 feet (1.2 meters) lower.
"We thought this slippage would happen gradually, bit by bit. We didn't expect it to happen all at once," says Testuro Imakiire, a researcher at Japan's Geospatial Information Authority, the government body in charge of mapping and surveys.
Imakiire says the quake was powerful enough to move the entire country, the first time this has been recorded since measurements began in the late 19th century. In Tokyo, 210 miles (340 kilometers) from Ishinomaki, parts of the city moved 9 inches (24 centimeters) seaward.
The drop lower was most pronounced around Ishinomaki, the area closest to the epicenter. The effects are apparent: Manholes, supported by underground piping, jut out of streets that fell around them. Telephone poles sank even farther, leaving wires at head height.
As surrounding areas clear rubble and make plans to rebuild, residents in this section of Ishinomaki are stuck in limbo — their homes are mostly undamaged and ineligible for major insurance claims or government compensation, but twice a day the tide swamps their streets.
"We can't really complain, because other people lost so much," says Yuichiro Mogi, 43, as his daughters examine a dead blowfish floating near his curb.
The earthquake and tsunami left more than 25,000 people either dead or missing, and many more lost their homes and possessions.
Mogi noticed that the daily floods were slowly carrying away the dirt foundation of his house, and built a small embankment of sandbags to keep the water at bay. The shipping company worker moved here 10 years ago, because he got a good deal on enough land to build a home with a spacious front lawn, where he lives with his four children and wife.
Most of the residences in the area are relatively new.
"Everyone here still has housing loans they have to pay, and you can't give away this land, let alone sell it," says Seietsu Sasaki, 57, who also has to pay off loans on two cars ruined in the flooding.
Sasaki, who moved in 12 years ago with his extended family, says he hopes the government can build flood walls to protect the neighborhood. He never paid much attention to the tides in the past, but now checks the newspaper for peak times each morning.
Officials have begun work on some embankments, but with much of the city devastated, resources are tight. Major construction projects to raise the roads were completed before the tsunami, but much of that work was negated when the ground below them sank.
The constant flooding means that construction crews can only work in short bursts, and electricity and running water were restored only about two weeks ago. The area still doesn't have gas for hot water, and residents go to evacuee shelters to bathe.
"We get a lot of requests to build up these areas, but we don't really have the budget right now," says Kiyoshi Koizumi, a manager in Ishinomaki's roads and infrastructure division.
Sasaki says he hopes they work something out soon: Japan's heavy summer rains begin in about a month, and the higher tides in autumn will rise well above the floor of his house.

Big Asteroid's Approach in November Excites Astronomers

An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will come closer to Earth this autumn than our own moon does, causing scientists to hold their breath as it zooms by. But they'll be nervous with excitement, not with worry about a possible disaster.
There's no danger of an impact when the asteroid 2005 YU55 makes its close flyby Nov. 8, coming within 201,700 miles (325,000 kilometers) of Earth, scientists say.
So they're looking forward to the encounter, which could help them learn more about big space rocks.
"While near-Earth objects of this size have flown within a lunar distance in the past, we did not have the foreknowledge and technology to take advantage of the opportunity," Barbara Wilson, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "When it flies past, it should be a great opportunity for science instruments on the ground to get a good look." [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]
Getting to know YU55
Asteroid 2005 YU55 is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide. It was discovered in December 2005 by the Spacewatch program at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Because of the asteroid’s size and orbital characteristics, astronomers have flagged 2005 YU55 as potentially dangerous down the road. But the upcoming encounter is no cause for alarm, researchers said.
"YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so minuscule as to be immeasurable. It will not affect the tides or anything else." [5 Reasons to Care About Asteroids]
This round space rock has been in astronomers' cross hairs before. In April 2010, astronomers at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico generated some ghostly radar images of 2005 YU55 when the asteroid was about 1.5 million miles (2.3 million km) from Earth.
But those pictures had a resolution of just 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel. The November close pass should provide some sharper images.
"When 2005 YU55 returns this fall, we intend to image it at 4-meter resolution [13 feet] with our recently upgraded equipment at the Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California," said JPL radar astronomer Lance Benner. "Plus, the asteroid will be seven times closer. We're expecting some very detailed radar images."
A radar astronomy opportunity
Radar astronomy employs the world's biggest dish-shaped antennas. The antennas direct microwave signals at celestial targets that can be as far away as the moons of Saturn.
These signals bounce off the target, and the resulting "echo" helps researchers create radar images. These images can then be used to reconstruct detailed, three-dimensional models of the object.
With 4-meter-per-pixel resolution, the new views of 2005 YU55 should be pretty sharp, perhaps even showing boulders and craters, researchers said.
"We're talking about getting down to the kind of surface detail you dream of when you have a spacecraft fly by one of these targets," Benner said.
The data collected from Arecibo, Goldstone and ground-based optical and infrared telescopes also should help detail the mineral composition of the asteroid, researchers said.
"This is a C-type asteroid, and those are thought to be representative of the primordial materials from which our solar system was formed," Wilson said. "This flyby will be an excellent opportunity to test how we study, document and quantify which asteroids would be most appropriate for a future human mission."
The capabilities of the Goldstone antenna, in California's Mojave Desert, and of Arecibo are complementary. The Arecibo radar is about 20 times more sensitive and can detect asteroids about twice as far away. But its main dish is stationary, so it can see only about a third of the sky. Goldstone is fully steerable and can see about 80 percent of the accessible sky, so it can track objects for longer periods and can image asteroids at finer spatial resolution, researchers said.
Researchers are eager to train the instruments of both facilities on 2005 YU55 in November.
"So stay tuned," Yeomans said. "This is going to be fun."

Two dead as tornado hits New Zealand city

A freak tornado hit New Zealand's largest city Auckland on Tuesday, killing two people and injuring dozens more as it ripped the roof off a suburban shopping mall.Packing winds of 200 kilometres an hour (125 miles an hour), the twister hit the suburb of Albany without warning at about 3pm (0300 GMT), flipping cars and uprooting trees as it carved a trail of destruction stretching for kilometres. Television footage showed huge pieces of roofing and debris flying through the air after the tornado hit, sending panicked locals fleeing for shelter.

Witnesses said the tornado sounded like "a giant vacuum cleaner" when it tore across the Albany Megacentre, one of the largest shopping centres in the country.

Auckland mayor Len Brown said two people were killed and dozens injured, adding the death toll could rise.
"We've had two confirmed fatalities, it's absolutely disastrous," he told Radio New Zealand.
The tornado is the latest in a string of disasters to hit New Zealand, including two earthquakes in Christchurch, the second of which claimed more than 180 lives, and a colliery explosion last November in which 29 miners died.

Witness Rob Crawford said the scene around the shopping centre resembled a disaster movie after the tornado, which passed over in less than 30 seconds.
"Car parks scattered with the remains of trees, upturned cars. There's iron off the roof... it's surreal," he told the New Zealand Herald.
"It's a movie set. (You think) is this real, is this happening? But when you see people lying on the ground, covered in blood, clutching their heads, it's damn real."

One witness told Sky News that cars were crushed with people inside.
Shop worker Martin Sibrits said the resulting devastation looked like a bomb site.
"It was simply unbelievable, it was huge. I could see bit pieces of iron flying through the air, 100 metres up," he told Fairfax Media.

The Auckland city council said an emergency centre had been set up to coordinate relief efforts, while police urged people to stay indoors. "We encourage people to return home, contact family if necessary. Leave roads near Albany commercial area free for emergency services," police said. New Zealand Metservice meteorologist Peter Kreft said the tornado hit without warning and the damage stretched for kilometres, with the eye of the storm measuring more that 10 metres (33 feet) wide. He said such twisters were relatively rare in New Zealand.

"Tornadoes in New Zealand are typically of that size, they're nothing like the size that are observed in the Midwest of the US," he told Radio New Zealand.
"So while it's a tragic and devastating event for the area it's passed over, in the broader scheme of things it's a relatively small tornado."
Another tornado struck Albany 20 years ago in May 1991, killing one man who was hit by debris while he was driving a bulldozer.