How will our Earth Ends

With a year packed full of strong solar flares affecting communications, future volcanic predictions and giant asteroids passing dangerously close to Earth, what kind of cataclysmic events are most likely to push humans to the brink of extinction? We look at some of the most popular doomsday theories and examine whether these five natural phenomena could end the world as we know it – or whether they are just pure science fiction.

Meteorites and asteroids

Giant pieces of rock falling from space made exciting plots for ‘90s sci-fi movies like ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Deep Impact’. Meteorite impact or The ‘Alvarez’ hypothesis met criticism when the theory was first raised in 1980, but it has since been widely accepted that a meteorite strike could have actually wiped out the whole dinosaur population over 65 million years ago.

The last known meteorite to hit Earth, causing significant damage, was in 1908 when a meteorite the size of a ten-storey building exploded over Siberia, flattening 80 million trees over 2,000 square kilometres near the Tunguska River. Luckily, the region was so remote that the strike didn’t harm anyone. Programme scientist for Near Earth Objects at NASA told Yahoo! News: “Such an event releases energies on the order of a few megatons of TNT, because of the velocity at which they impact – many kilometres per second. The Hiroshima atomic bomb released the equivalent of about 15 kilotons of TNT. So even relatively small asteroids could cause the damage equivalent to a very large nuclear weapon if they were to strike the Earth.”

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Russian scientists have issued some more apocalyptic predictions. An asteroid dubbed ‘Apophis’, estimated to be the size of two football fields, could collide with Earth as early as 16 April 2036 if a change in gravity causes it to fall out of its orbit. While they admit it is theoretically possible for the asteroid to hit Earth, they note that the chances are remote; in fact, they put the odds at one in 233,000. Sergei Smirnov, a spokesman at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Observatory, said: “How much of a threat this asteroid actually presents will be impossible to assess until 2028, when it approaches our planet. If it does strike, our planet will face a continental disaster and major climate change. And if the asteroid falls into an ocean, the disaster could assume global proportions.”


Solar storms

Powerful solar storms exactly like the ones the world witnessed at the beginning of 2011 occur once every eleven years as the sun’s magnetic field flips over. ‘Solar Cycle 24’ has been building gradually with the number of sunspots and solar storms set to reach a ‘solar maximum’ by 2013. Super solar flares send great geysers of hot gas and huge quantities of charged particles erupting from the surface into space. These flares of charged particles, called ‘coronal mass ejections’, slam into the Earth's magnetic shield impairing electrical devices in their path.

In 1859, the ‘Carrington Event’, a solar flare which lasted eight days, wreaked havoc on all of the world’s telegraphs and set buildings on fire. The National Academy of Sciences says that in modern times the solar flares could knock out 300 important transformers within 90 seconds and cut power for 130 million people. They also estimated that during the first year after a solar storm, damage could be as high as £1.2 trillion with a recovery time of four to ten years. A spokeswoman from the Heliophysics division at NASA told Yahoo! News: “Saying solar flares would end the world is a little drastic. But in terms of affecting us as humans, it is very damaging to our lifestyles; it can destroy communications that we are very dependent on, like power lines and GPS satellites.”

As the sun is said to become more turbulent as it approaches the peak in its activity cycle around 2013, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, warned: “We've had a relatively quiet period of space weather. We can't expect that quiet period to continue. At the same time over that period the potential vulnerability of our systems has increased dramatically, whether it is the smart grid in our electricity systems or the ubiquitous use of GPS in just about everything we use these days. The situation has changed. We need to be thinking about the ability both to categorise and explain and give early warning when particular types of space weather are likely to occur.”

Pole shift

According to some modern astronomers and an ancient Mayan prophecy, on the winter solstice of 21 December 2012, Earth will be in exact alignment with the sun and the centre of the Milky Way galaxy - an extraordinary event which happens once every 25,800 years. No one knows exactly what effect this alignment will have on Earth, but the Mayans believed that the consequences of the inter-galactic occurrence would be catastrophic, prompting the world’s end. It is imagined that a magnetic field effect reversal will take place, where the entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, changing the position of the North and the South Pole. Such a rapid change in the Earth’s dynamics would result in earthquakes, tsunamis, global climatic change and eventually the ultimate planetary disaster, similar to the one depicted in the disaster movie ‘2012’.

Despite their beliefs, polar shift has been backed by some scientists, albeit not at the rapidity the Mayans believed. Renowned scientist Albert Einstein is known to have been an advocator of the theory and according to a 2006 study by Princeton University, geologist, Adam Maloof said that the Earth’s poles have shifted before. The study found that the North Pole could have rested in the middle of the Pacific Ocean 800 million years ago, placing the state of Alaska as far south as the equator.

However, NASA disagrees, predicting that the polar shift event will not mean that Earth meets it fate. Experts debunked the theory, saying: “Nothing bad will happen to Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than four billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012. There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible.”

Super volcano eruptions

2010’s eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland brought air travel across Northern Europe to a virtual standstill, but if one of the largest known super volcanoes was to blow, it could cause a global disaster of biblical proportions. According to volcanologists, the last super volcano to erupt was Mount Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, 75,000 years ago. Thousands of cubic kilometres of ash and sulphur dioxide were thrown into the atmosphere - so much that it blocked out light from the sun all over the world, resulting in global temperatures plummeting by 21°c. It is imagined that black acidic rain would have fallen due to gas poisoning. Such an event supposedly eradicated mankind, cutting the population to just a couple of thousand people, and three quarters of all living plants in the northern hemisphere are thought to have been killed.

Now international scientists speak about the possibility of a future eruption of one of the largest known prehistoric volcanoes - the Yellowstone caldera in Wyoming, which sits above a large magma chamber and is showing more signs of activity. Observers say that an eruption would result in a mega disaster coating half the US in a layer of ash up to one metre deep, killing livestock and putting thousands of human lives at risk. Scientists say that it typically erupts every 600,000 years, but the last eruption occurred 640,000 years ago, meaning the next one is long overdue.

Global warming

Should the Earth’s average temperature continue to rise at the rate it has done over the last 50 years, the face of the Earth as we know it will change, say climatologists. The reasons for this type of man-made climate change have been well-documented and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says it’s not too late to save our planet as leading figures try to stop the ill-effects that the Earth’s population and living species will experience from the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ before the world becomes unbearable for man to live in.

The IPCC has drafted the worst-case scenario. According to an assessment of how global warming could progress beyond 2100 - the normal time frame of model predictions - if temperatures rise by even 6°C rainforests will be wiped out, fertility of many soils will be destroyed and the Arctic will be left ice-free even in midwinter. London will be as hot as Cairo with air quality so poor it would endanger human respiratory systems. The world’s most populous low-lying cities like Tokyo, New York, Mumbai, Shanghai and Dhaka will be engulfed by floods after an eleven-metre rise in sea levels. Extreme weather events, like hurricanes and droughts will become more common, with climate change spreading more infectious diseases.

Doctors warn that global warming will also create more heat-related deaths from cardiovascular problems and strokes. Young children and the elderly will be especially vulnerable to higher temperatures. Scientists claim that humanity will be reduced to a few last survivors living near the poles with it eventually going extinct over the next couple of centuries if we don’t stop emissions.

from yahoo

Rare near-Earth asteroid fly-by set for Tuesday

A massive asteroid will make a rare fly-by Tuesday, and although it poses no danger of crashing to Earth, US scientists said this week they are looking forward to getting a closer look.

"This is not a potentially hazardous asteroid, just a good opportunity to study one," said National Science Foundation astronomer Thomas Statler.

The circular asteroid, named 2005 YU55, is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide and will come closer than the Moon, zipping by at a distance of 202,000 miles (325,000 kilometers), the US space agency said.

The time of the nearest flyby is expected to be at 2328 GMT (6:28 Eastern time in the US).

The encounter will be the closest by an asteroid of that size in more than 30 years, and a similar event will not happen again until 2028.

Astronomers who have studied the object, part of the C-class of asteroids, say it is very dark, like the color of carbon, and quite porous.

It was first discovered in 2005 by Robert McMillan of the Spacewatch Project, a solar-system-scanning group of scientists near Tucson, Arizona.

While 2005 YU55 will stay a safe distance away, it is part of a crew of 1,262 big asteroids circling the Sun and measuring more than 500 feet (150 meters) across that NASA classifies as "potentially hazardous."

"We want to study these asteroids so if one does look like it may hit us someday, we'll know what to do about it," Statler said.

The asteroid's closest pass is set to take place in 2094, at a distance of 167,000 miles (269,000 kilometers), according to forecasts.

"The observations will give us a piece of the puzzle, one we don't get many chances to see," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"At one time, we thought these were the asteroids that delivered carbon and other elements to the early Earth, so they are pretty important."

NASA said the last time a space rock this big approached Earth was in 1976, "although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time."

NASA 'solves' 2,000-year supernova mystery

New infrared observations from NASA telescopes have revealed how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.
The US space agency said Monday its Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) had solved a mystery dating from 2,000 years ago when Chinese astronomers witnessed what turned out to be an exploding star.
The findings show that the stellar explosion took place in a hollowed-out cavity, allowing material expelled by the star to travel much faster and farther than it would have otherwise.
"This supernova remnant got really big, really fast," said Brian Williams, an astronomer at North Carolina State University and lead author of a new study detailing the telescope's findings online in the Astrophysical Journal.
"It's two to three times bigger than we would expect for a supernova that was witnessed exploding nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, we've been able to finally pinpoint the cause," he added.
In 185 A.D., Chinese astronomers noted a "guest star" that mysteriously appeared in the sky and stayed for about eight months. By the 1960s, scientists had determined that the mysterious object was the first documented supernova.
Later, they pinpointed the object, known as RCW 86, as a supernova remnant located about 8,000 light-years away but remained puzzled at how the star's spherical remains were larger than expected.
"With multiple observatories extending our senses in space, we can fully appreciate the remarkable physics behind this star's death throes, yet still be as in awe of the cosmos as the ancient astronomers," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer and WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

5.2 quake hits Japan's Fukushima prefecture

A moderate earthquake has shaken the northeastern Japanese prefecture where the much more massive earthquake and tsunami touched off the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl earlier this year.
The 5.2-magnitude quake struck Fukushima Prefecture overnight just after 2 a.m. local time Wednesday (1700 GMT Tuesday). Its epicenter was on the coast near the town of Iwaki, 115 miles (186 km) north of Tokyo.
Fukushima was severely hit by the quake and tsunami in March that left more than 21,000 people dead or missing.
The Wednesday quake was about 70 miles (120 km south) of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility.
Another 5.3 quake later Wednesday hit 262 miles (423 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, off the Japan coast.

Strong quake hits west Indonesia; at least 1 dead

A powerful earthquake jolted the western Indonesian island of Sumatra early Tuesday, killing a 12-year-old boy and sending people streaming from houses, hotels and at least one hospital in panic.
The magnitude-6.6 quake was centered 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of the city of Medan and 62 miles (110 kilometers) beneath the earth's crust, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It was too far inland to generate a tsunami.
The quake hit at about 1 a.m. (1800 GMT Monday), rattling people from their sleep in towns and villages across the island's northern tip.
Maura Sakti, a mayor in Subulussalam, told local station TVOne a 12-year-old boy had been killed. At least one other person was injured.
Hundreds of people were evacuated to temporary shelters as authorities surveyed the extent of the damage, said Lt. Col. Helmy Kesuma, police chief in the hard-hit town of Singkil.
Some electricity poles were knocked down there, crashing into homes and causing blackouts.
"My wife was screaming, my children crying," said Burhan Mardiansyah, 37, a Singkil resident. "We saw our walls start to crack and everything inside the house was falling. Thank God we're all safe."
The panic extended all the way to Medan, the sprawling provincial capital of North Sumatra, where hundreds of patients from at least one hospital had to be evacuated, some in wheelchairs or with infusion drips still attached to their arms.
Hotels emptied out and residents ran into the streets or the balconies of their rented homes, clutching babies to their chests.
Fearing aftershocks, many refused to go back inside for hours.
Indonesia straddles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to volcanic and seismic activity.
A giant quake off the country on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, half of them in Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh.

Grim search after 37 die in Japan typhoon

Rescue teams carried out a painstaking search on Monday for the missing after a typhoon pounded western Japan leaving at least 37 people dead and more than 50 unaccounted for, local authorities said.
Torrential rain brought by powerful Typhoon Talas, which made landfall Saturday and was one of the deadliest in years, caused rivers to swell and triggered floods and landslides that swept away buildings, homes and roads.
Police and firefighters resumed a search for the missing early Monday, warning that the number of victims was set to rise as the continued threat of landslides and damaged access routes hampered relief efforts.
In the deadliest typhoon since an October 2004 storm killed nearly 100 people, floods triggered by Typhoon Talas gave rise to scenes eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of the March 11 tsunami that hit northeast Japan.
In Nachikatsuura town, a railway bridge was swept into a river, while TV footage showed splintered trees, crushed houses and cars tossed onto walls and buildings by the raging floodwaters that inundated entire neighbourhoods.
By Sunday, Talas had been downgraded to a tropical storm after it moved over Japan and into the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the Meteorological Agency said, but risks of further landslides posed a threat to rescue and recovery efforts.
The storm came after new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was sworn in on Friday, replacing Naoto Kan, who was heavily criticised for the government's response in the aftermath of the March 11 disasters.
"We will do our best in saving lives and finding the missing," Noda told reporters Monday.
The Talas weather system dumped 1.8 metres (six feet) of rain on a village in Nara prefecture for five days through Sunday, more than Tokyo's annual average rainfall, said the Yomiuri daily.
The Kyodo News agency and Jiji Press late Monday said the death toll had risen to 37.
"We are struggling to get a hold on the current situation... electricity is out and destroyed roads are preventing our vehicles from going into affected areas," said an official at the fire department in Tanabe, Wakayama prefecture.

"We are conducting operations everywhere in the city. With phone lines down, however, we have no means of communication" with those stranded in areas hit by landslides or flooding, the official said.
The daughter of Nachikatsuura town mayor Shinichi Teramoto was killed as the official ran disaster relief operations on Sunday and his wife was also missing. His house was destroyed by a torrent of water.
"I saw the body of my daughter. The best I could do was to be by her side for half an hour," NHK footage showed the mayor saying in his office.
"While I'm here, I don't want to show my sorrow even though I have this in my mind," he said.
Television footage showed massive landslides crushing wooden houses in mountain communities, with muddy water submerging streets and washing away wooden debris and cars.
A tally by Kyodo said at least 3,600 people were left stranded by landslides and collapsed bridges.
In hard-hit Wakayama and Nara prefectures, officials told AFP that more than 1,300 people were staying at evacuation centres with around 7,000 households being asked to flee.

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.
The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.
Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.
In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.
The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.
In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.
Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.
Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.
"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."

Rare quake rattles eastern US, sparks evacuations

The strongest earthquake to strike the eastern United States in more than a century rattled downtown Washington on Tuesday and sparked fearful evacuations from skyscrapers in New York.
The eastern seaboard rarely experiences earthquakes and many workers were bewildered -- and feared the worst -- as their desks swayed violently and their ceilings and walls vibrated with ominous intensity.

In a region about to relive the trauma of 9/11 on the 10th anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks, many suspected terrorism as they raced down stairways to parks and street corners on a thankfully pleasant summer afternoon.

"I was in the street when the ground shook and I looked up to see the building shaking like a tuning fork," Mary Daley told AFP in New York. Thousands of workers fled office buildings and poured onto the streets of Manhattan to be herded by police towards open areas, trying in vain to use overloaded cell phone services to contact loved ones.

In a bizarre legal twist, the quake prompted the early closure of courthouse offices, meaning former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn had to wait until Wednesday to collect his passport and leave the country after sexual assault charges against him were dropped.

Fatima Richardson, 28, who was sitting on the steps of New York's state courthouse on her lunch break, told AFP: "You could see the building moving. I was just freaking out."
The 5.8-magnitude quake, which lasted 20-30 seconds and whose epicenter was 3.7 miles (six kilometers) under the small and aptly-named Virginian town of Mineral, was felt as far away as Boston and even in parts of Canada.
The Pentagon, the US Capitol and the historic monuments of the capital were all evacuated and airports suffered delays, but the damage was restricted to only a handful of buildings and there were no reports of casualties.
President Barack Obama was not at the White House and did not feel the quake as he was playing golf some 500 miles (800 kilometers) away in tranquil Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. But people as far away as Ottawa, Canada to the north and Atlanta, Georgia to the south did report feeling the temblor, as did residents in the midwestern US states of Indiana and Michigan. Scientists said the harder, more brittle quality of the ground explained why rare tremors on the east coast are often felt over an area many times bigger than those of a similar magnitude on the more quake-prone west coast. The temblor also hit as emergency officials warned that Hurricane Irene, which was roaring through the Atlantic, may strike the eastern US seaboard this weekend.

Briefed by his aides, Obama was told "there are no initial reports of major infrastructure damage, including at airports and nuclear facilities," said deputy White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

In Washington, the National Cathedral lost part of its towering neogothic spires and suffered cracks in its flying buttresses after the quake struck at 1751 GMT.
Traffic in and around the capital was gridlocked and rail services were slowed, but DC fire and emergency spokesman Pete Piringer said there were no reports of serious damage or injuries.
Near the epicenter in Virginia, the 1,800 megawatt North Anna nuclear power station declared an alert after losing electricity from the grid but its safety systems kicked it and it was now operating normally, officials said.

The US Geological Survey said the epicenter was 38 miles (61 kilometers) from Richmond, Virginia, and 84 miles (135 kilometers) from Washington.
It was the largest quake in Virginia since May 1897, when a 5.9 quake struck near the state's western edge.

The Pentagon, the world's biggest office building located across the River Potomac from the capital, ordered a brief evacuation, which was carried out calmly.
Several hundred people streamed out of the building and officials said there was no damage other than a ruptured water line.

End Times? Texas Lake Turns Blood-Red

A Texas lake that turned blood-red this summer may not be a sign of the End Times, but probably is the end of a popular fishing and recreation spot.
A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red.
The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water.
"It's just heartbreaking," said Charles Cruz, a fish and wildlife technician with Texas Parks and Wildlife in San Angelo, Tex.

Indonesia raises red alert at volcano

Indonesia on Monday said it would evacuate hundreds of people living near Mount Lokon on Sulawesi island after raising the volcano's alert status to the highest level.
"We raised the volcano's status to the highest red alert level last night. There was a significant rise in volcanic activity since July 9. The volcano spewed ash 500 metres (1,600 feet) into the air over the weekend," government volcanologist Kristianto told AFP.
"Today we will be evacuating people living within a 3.5-kilometre (two-mile) radius around the volcano as a precautionary measure, in case of a bigger eruption which may be accompanied by deadly searing gas," he added.
Around 28,000 people live within the evacuation zone but only "hundreds" will be moved Monday, those in the path of the ash, as officials continue to monitor volcanic activity, disaster management agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
Officials said tourists would also be barred from going on popular day hikes to the 1,580-metre Mount Lokon, one of the most active volcanoes in Indonesia and located 20 kilometres away from North Sulawesi provincial capital of Manado.
The volcano erupted in 1991, killing a Swiss tourist.
Mount Soputan, another volcano in North Sulawesi province, erupted early this month, spewing ash and smoke 5,000 metres into the air.
The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the "Ring of Fire" between the Pacific and Indian oceans.
The country's most active volcano, Mount Merapi in central Java, has killed more than 350 people in a series of violent eruptions which started in late October.

6.2-magnitude earthquake rocks Philippines

A 6.2 magnitude earthquake has struck off Negros Island in the Philippines, according to the U.S. Geological survey.

The quake, which struck at 20:47 GMT, had its epicenter 78 miles (126 kilometers) west-northwest of the city of Dumaguete on Negros Island and 357 miles (576 kilometers) south-southeast of Manila, the Philippine capital, at a depth of 11.8 miles (19 kilometers).

The quake was followed by a 5.1-magnitude aftershock at 21:03 GMT.
No Tsunami warning was issued following the quake and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Quake hits off Philippine coast, no damage

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the Philippines on Tuesday but caused no damage, authorities said.

The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 4:47 am (2047 GMT), 125 kilometres (78 miles) west of Negros island, at a depth of 19 kilometres.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake struck in the Sulu Sea 93 kilometres southwest of Dumaguete City, one of the major cities on Negros.
Authorities were confident the quake caused no damage, according to Nazario Caro, a duty officer with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council on the neighbouring island of Panay.
"We did not issue any tsunami alert. We have checked the nearby areas and we did not get any reports of damage or casualties," Caro told AFP by telephone.
The Philippines sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire -- a belt around the Pacific Ocean dotted by active volcanoes and tectonic trenches, where frequent eruptions and earthquakes take place.

6.2 earthquake strikes Philippines: USGS

The USGS said the quake occurred at 4:47 am (2047 GMT), 125 kilometres (78 miles) west of Negros, at a depth of 19 kilometres, having initially measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.6.
The Philippines sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire -- a belt around the Pacific Ocean dotted by active volcanoes and tectonic trenches, where frequent eruptions and earthquakes take place.
Citizens have been nervous about a potential killer quake following the devastating tremors that have hit Japan and New Zealand this year.
One fault line runs directly under Manila, and government seismologists have warned that the city is unprepared for a major quake.

5.6 quake rattles Japan near Fukushima site

An earthquake registering 5.6 shook the Pacific off Honshu, Japan, the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday. That is the area of northeast Japan ravaged by a March 11 quake and tsunami that knocked out power at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

No immediate damage or casualties were reported from the quake that struck at 3:35 a.m. Friday (1835 GMT Thursday), the USGS said. No tsunami watch was immediately issued.
The epicenter of the quake was some 51 miles (83 kilometers) southeast of Fukushima, in Honshu, Japan, the USGS said. The quake was centered some 28 miles (45 kilometers deep, the agency said.
The March 11 quake was magnitude 9.0, triggering a disaster that devastated Japan's northeastern coast, destroying towns, homes and businesses. More than 22,600 people are dead or missing.

Phoenix Dust Storm: Video of Doomsday Scenes in Arizona

These amazing pictures from the United States show a wall of dust moving through the city of Phoenix in Arizona. Sandstorms like this happen during the region's monsoon season, which is underway. They occur over desert land and can reach thousands of feet into the air, spurred by strong winds. The dense cloud dramatically reduced visibility, grounding flights at a major airport and leaving thousands without electricity.

Phoenix Dust Storm: Video of Doomsday Scenes in Arizona

Japan begins nuclear charm offensive

Japan began a campaign Sunday to convince communities hosting nuclear reactors to let operations resume, with several local governments blocking nuclear power generation after the atomic crisis in Fukushima.
Central government officials held a briefing in Saga prefecture, where two reactors at the Genkai power plant are among several across the country that were halted for regular checks when a huge quake and tsunami hit on March 11.
Local officials have since withheld routine consent for operations to resume, citing safety concerns after the tsunami triggered a crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has leaked radiation into air, soil and sea.
Sunday's briefing was broadcast online, but only seven government-selected local residents were allowed to attend, while the meeting venue was not disclosed to the public.
In a press conference after the 90-minute briefing, one of the seven complained that it had been "way too short".
Another participant said: "Officials used many technical terms that were too difficult to understand. Since I didn't understand, I cannot agree with their explanation."
Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the building against the government's nuclear policy.
"This is a programme designed to lead to an approval for the resumption of operations of the Genkai reactors. We cannot accept that," one of the protesters, Hatsumi Ishimaru, 59, was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.
Nuclear energy makes up about a third of Japan's overall energy supply, but the government has faced stiff criticism from the public on the issue since the Fukushima crisis forced the evacuation of thousands of local residents.

Total lunar eclipse, Signs of Destruction

The year's first total eclipse of the moon will last an unusually long time, a rare celestial treat for a wide swath of the globe.
Except if you're in the United States and Canada. North America will be left out of Wednesday's lunar spectacle, which will be visible from start to finish from eastern Africa, central Asia, the Middle East and western Australia — weather permitting.
The period when Earth's shadow completely blocks the moon — known as totality — will last a whopping 1 hour and 40 minutes. The last time the moon was covered for this long was in July 2000, when it lasted 7 minutes longer than that.
The full moon normally glows from reflected sunlight. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon glides through the long shadow cast by the Earth and is blocked from the sunlight that illuminates it.

As the moon plunges deeper into the Earth's shadow, the disk will appear to gradually change color, turning from silver to orange or red. This is because some indirect sunlight still reaches the moon after passing through the Earth's atmosphere, which scatters blue light. Only red light strikes the moon, giving it an eerie crimson hue.

Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

WASHINGTON (AFP) – For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.
According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.
The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.
"This is highly unusual and unexpected," said Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, as the findings of the three studies were presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
"But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."
Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.
Hill said the current cycle, number 24, "may be the last normal one for some time and the next one, cycle 25, may not happen for some time.
"This is important because the solar cycle causes space weather which affects modern technology and may contribute to climate change," he told reporters.
Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as the "Little Ice Age."
"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate," said Hill.
Solar flares and eruptions can send highly charged particles hurtling toward Earth and interfere with satellite communications, GPS systems and even airline controls.
Geomagnetic forces have been known to occasionally garble the world's modern gadgetry, and warnings were issued as recently as last week when a moderate solar flare sent a coronal mass ejection in the Earth's direction.
The temperature change associated with any reduction in sunspot activity would likely be minimal and may not be enough to offset the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming, according to scientists who have published recent papers on the topic.
"Recent solar 11-year cycles are associated empirically with changes in global surface temperature of 0.1 Celsius," said Judith Lean, a solar physicist with the US Naval Research Laboratory.
If the cycle were to stop or slow down, the small fluctuation in temperature would do the same, eliminating the slightly cooler effect of a solar minimum compared to the warmer solar maximum. The phenomenon was witnessed during the descending phase of the last solar cycle.
This "cancelled part of the greenhouse gas warming of the period 2000-2008, causing the net global surface temperature to remain approximately flat -- and leading to the big debate of why the Earth hadn't (been) warming in the past decade," Lean, who was not involved in the three studies presented, said in an email to AFP.
A study in the March 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters explored what effect an extended solar minimum might have, and found no more than a 0.3 Celsius dip by 2100 compared to normal solar fluctuations.
"A new Maunder-type solar activity minimum cannot offset the global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions," wrote authors Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf, noting that forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have found a range of 3.7 Celsius to 4.5 Celsius rise by this century's end compared to the latter half of the 20th century.
"Moreover, any offset of global warming due to a grand minimum of solar activity would be merely a temporary effect, since the distinct solar minima during the last millennium typically lasted for only several decades or a century at most."

Chile volcano ash cloud shifts direction

A thick plume of ash from the erupting Puyehue volcano in the Andes shifted direction into Chile on Sunday after spewing volcanic dust over parts of Argentina.
North-westerly winds pushed the giant column of ash from the Chilean volcano, located 870 kilometers (540 miles) south of the capital Santiago near the border with Argentina, into Chile's Lago Ranco area.
The eruption forced some 3,500 people to be evacuated from 22 rural Chilean communities.
"This change means that we will have ash falling in the area, with damage to the population and a threat to small farmers," Lago Ranco Mayor Santiago Rosas told AFP.
The volcano, located in the Andes 2,240 meters (7,350 feet) above the sea level, appeared to have largely gone quiet on Sunday, though Chile's Office of National Emergencies (ONEMI) said it was experiencing a "moderate" level of erupting.
The Puyehue rumbled to life on Saturday after showing no activity since 1960, when it was awoken following a magnitude 9.5 earthquake.
"There are some people, especially heads of family, that have decided to stay home and take a risk. The government, for the time being, will not interfere in that individual decision," said the regional governor in Chile, Juan Andres Varas.
The eruption forced the nearby Argentine resort town of Bariloche, population 50,000, to declare a state of emergency on Saturday and close down its airport.
The eruption also forced a major border crossing point to close due to low visibility, an dropped ash on the upscale Argentine resort town of Villa La Angostura.
Bariloche, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the volcano, had covered in a sooty blanket of several centimeters (inches) thick and remained under a state of emergency.
The picturesque town, as well as others in the vicinity affected by the ash, welcomes thousands of foreign tourists each year to its lakes and mountain scenery, as well as ski slopes in the winter months.

Chile has some 3,000 volcanoes, of which some 500 are geologically active and 60 have erupted in the past half century.
In 2008 the eruption of the Chaiten volcano, also in southern Chile, spread a thick cloud of ash across a large swath of South America, grounding flights across the region. Ash from that eruption drifted east as far as the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.

Chile volcano quiet, but spectacular ash cloud persists

SOUTHERN Chile's Puyehue volcano has produced a massive ash cloud, forcing thousands to flee darkening skies as far away as Argentina.

A light drizzle rained down on the volcano on Sunday, helping to mitigate the effects of the airborne ash somewhat, while the mountain appeared to go quiet one day after having rumbled to life.

Volcano eruption alert in Chile forces mass evacuations

Southern Chile's Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century, prompting evacuation orders for 3,500 people as it sent smoke billowing into the sky, authorities said.
The National Service of Geology and Mining said the explosion that sparked the eruption also produced a column of gas 10 kilometers (six miles) high, hours after warning of strong seismic activity in the area.
"You can see the fire (in the volcano) and a plume of smoke, and there's a strong smell of sulfur," top Los Rios region official Juan Andres Varas told reporters.
The government, which earlier ordered the evacuation of 600 people, expanded that number to 3,500 people to be relocated to shelters in safe areas. Authorities issued a red alert, the maximum warning level, for the area.
A border crossing between Argentina and Chile was closed.
A cloud of ash could be seen in the Patagonian resort town of Bariloche in Argentina, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the volcano.
"We're trying to stop car traffic and ask that people stay at home and close their doors and windows to prevent the volcanic ash from coming in. The city's airport was also closed," Carlos Hidalgo, Bariloche's communications secretary, told TN television.
"Ash was dumped like a snowstorm... The city is covered in gray ash."
Nearby localities were also affected, said Hidalgo, whose city of 50,000 people welcomes thousands of foreign tourists each year to its lakes and mountain scenery.
Puyehue is located 870 kilometers (540 miles) south of the capital Santiago in the Cordon Caulle complex nestled in the Andes mountains. Its last major eruption was in 1960, following a magnitude 9.5 earthquake.

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.