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Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers -- two males and one female -- on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the researchers said on Tuesday.
They spotted a fourth one that got away.
The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them chomped Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas A&M University professor of anthropology who took part in the expedition.
"I'm the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier," Gursky-Doyen said in a telephone interview.
"My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around its neck. It's very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180 degrees. As I'm trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger. And I yanked it and I was bleeding."
The collars were being attached so the tarsiers' movements could be tracked.
Tarsiers are unusual primates -- the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.
As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small -- weighing about 2 ounces (50 grammes). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 Hollywood movie "Gremlins."
They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.
They had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.
"Until that time, everyone really didn't believe that they existed because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them," Gursky-Doyen said.
Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6,900 feet.
"Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It's always very, very foggy, very, very dense. It's cold up there. When you're one degree from the equator, you expect to be hot. You don't expect to be shivering most of the time. That's what we were doing," she said.
The quake was centered 84 miles northwest of Gorontalo in the Sulawesi region of Indonesia and was followed up by a 5.6 aftershock. A tsunami warning issued immediately after the quake was later lifted.
Officials said there were no immediate reports of fatalities, Al Jazeera reported.
An Indian Ocean tsunami four years ago caused about 225,000 deaths in Indonesia and 10 other nations.
"This is a much smaller earthquake than the Sumatra earthquake of December 2004," Stuart Weinstein of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii told Al Jazeera. "It is not going to be anything remotely like that."
Al Jazeera said the Indonesian state-run Antara news agency reported thousands of people fled their homes and hotel rooms in Gorontalo when the earthquake struck. At least one person was injured and several buildings collapsed in Gorontalo, which is home to several hundred thousand people. >>>>
At exactly 10 a.m. tomorrow, about 5 million people in Southern California will drop to the ground, take cover under a sturdy piece of furniture and hold on at the same time. Radio stations and school p.a. systems will play a sound track of rumbling and crashing, along with a man's voice declaring, "If this were the magnitude 7.8 earthquake we're practicing for today, you would be experiencing sudden and intense back-and-forth motions of up to 6 ft. per second. The floor or the ground would jerk sideways out from under you. Look around and imagine."
If this sounds weird, it's because it is. The Great ShakeOut, as it's being dubbed, is the biggest public emergency drill in U.S. history - and as such, it is a radical idea. Normally, large-scale disaster drills, which happen weekly across the country, are designed for professional rescuers, emergency managers and politicians. Not for you, and not for me. In fact, the people who matter most in a real-world emergency - the neighbors, office workers and students who do the majority of the lifesaving during big disasters - are almost never invited.
California's drill, too, originally was scheduled as an exercise for only emergency officials. That exercise, called Golden Guardian, will involve about 5,000 officials, from the local police to the U.S. military, all pretending they are responding to a major quake along the San Andreas Fault.
But in this case, California decided to invite the people too. Schools, offices and random Joes have been registering for the drill over a span of months. (In the two days after the 5.4-magnitude Chino Hills quake in July in California, 57,000 people registered.) Every city employee in Pasadena supposedly is participating, which should make for an interesting scene at City Hall come 10 a.m. You can already play a game to see if you know how to survive an earthquake. (I scored only 9 out of 14 on the first try, but now I am totally rocking an 11.) You can download audio to accompany the drill. You can watch a YouTube video about what would happen to California in such a quake. And, starting at 10:02 a.m. on Thursday, you can play a sprawling, multiplayer collaboration game called After Shock to see what happens on the other side.
Behind all this flash and exuberance is a stark reality. The southern section of the San Andreas Fault hasn't moved in about 300 years. We know it moves about every 150 years. So California is overdue for a major quake. In April, a new report concluded there is a 99.7% chance that a magnitude 6.7 or stronger quake will shake California within the next 30 years.
But most Southern Californians cannot readily imagine a quake of that scale. They haven't experienced one before, so they don't know how the g-forces will feel. The intent of the ShakeOut drill is to hijack the imagination. "Time and again, we've heard that there is a weak link between the scientific understanding of quakes and the ability of the public to pay attention and change their behavior," says Mariana Amatullo at the Art Center College of Design, one of the organizers of the event. "The goal was to find new opportunities for the public to be a little more resilient and empowered."
In earthquakes, most people do exactly the wrong thing. "Unfortunately, adults fail miserably when it comes to quake-safe actions," says InÉs Pearce, a spokeswoman for the Earthquake Country Alliance, the umbrella group for all the organizers. They run outside or inside. Or they run to a doorway, which is no longer considered wise. Most injuries occur when people try to move during the shaking. It is much safer to drop, cover and hold on close to wherever you happen to be standing. Children actually are much better at this - because they have regular drills in school.
So populist drills like this can save a lot of lives. As things stand now, if Thursday's "quake" actually happened, about 1,800 people would die and 53,000 would be hurt. Damages would reach an estimated $213 billion. Most people would be without electricity, clean water, ATMs, YouTube videos and multiplayer collaboration games for weeks or months.
California starring in massive earthquake drill
California will star Thursday in a mock earthquake disaster drill — considered the largest in U.S. history — with some 5 million people pledging to do everything from ducking for cover to rescuing faux victims.
The exercise centers on a hypothetical magnitude-7.8 earthquake that unzips the southern San Andreas Fault — an event that scientists call the feared "Big One." Such a quake would cause 1,800 deaths and $200 billion in damage, researchers estimate.
The state's previous simulated quake catastrophes were smaller in scale with the leading actors mainly first responders and cities testing their emergency preparedness. Thursday's drill is more of an ensemble cast with governments, schools, hospitals, churches, businesses and residents promising to do their part.
"We're trying to make it a communal event," said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, who spent the past year organizing the drill.
California is the most seismically active state in the Lower 48. Earlier this year, the USGS calculated the state faces a 46 percent chance of being hit by a 7.5 or larger quake in the next 30 years with the epicenter likely in Southern California.
Despite the known seismic risks, California has never been as organized as Japan, which holds an annual quake drill to mark the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, a magnitude-8.3 temblor in Tokyo that killed more than 140,000 people.
Interest in the statewide exercise was initially low, Jones said, but peaked after the state was jolted by a moderate quake this summer.
Though a far cry from the "Big One," the July magnitude-5.4 temblor centered in the hills east of Los Angeles was the strongest to rattle a populated area of Southern California since the 1994 Northridge disaster. After the shaking stopped, 400 new people signed up for the drill, Jones said.
If such a quake hit, scientists say, sections of freeways would collapse, water pipes would burst and certain high-rise buildings and older structures would fall.
Scientists estimate it cost $2 million to organize and publicize the drill.
The minimum participation requires people to dive for safety at 10 a.m. PST on Thursday, the start of the drill. Other participants are staging full-scale exercises complete with search-and-rescue missions and medical triaging of people posing as casualty victims.
It's not all doom and gloom. Scientists plan to follow up the drill with a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.
ON an island in the Napo River in Ecuador’s Amazonian rain forest, in a tin-roofed hut on stilts, live some of the world’s most unusual chocolate entrepreneurs.
César and Magdalena Dahua grow cacao, along with pineapples, vanilla, avocados, cassava, coffee, oranges and plantains. As they hack off the football-shaped fruit of the cacao trees, their three youngest daughters run barefoot nearby. The girls stop to suck the sticky white pulp that envelops the cacao beans in the pods. It tastes like Sour Patch candies.
For Quechua people like the Dahuas, cacao has always been a treat — the pulp a tart candy and the purple bean, when ground to a paste and mixed with hot water and a little sugar, a rustic hot chocolate.
But mostly, the beans were a commodity, sold for about 20 cents a pound to men who would bring them to the port of Guayaquil. From there they would be shipped around the world to be turned into mass-produced chocolate. Every once in a while the Quechua might even taste it.
But the Quechua grew tired of making such a meager living from so highly valued a product. With the help of volunteers they eliminated the middlemen and created their own chocolate. Now Kallari bars (pronounced kai-YAH-ri) — named for the cooperative they formed — are being sold throughout the United States. People in the chocolate industry said they knew of no other cacao farmers who were making and marketing their own chocolate.
The cooperative uses an unusual blend of cacaos that grow on the Quechua land — fruity Cacao Amazónico, nutty Criollo, Forastero Amazónico, Tipo Trinitario and, most important, a rare variety that flourishes around their homes, Cacao Nacional.
“They have a certain smell and taste that is herbal, flowery but also savory, like black pepper,” Tomas Keme, a Swiss chocolate expert who consults for Kallari, said of the Cacao Nacional beans. “It’s the same taste I find in a Californian cabernet.”
The chocolate is smooth, rich and straightforward. The 2.47-ounce bars, in 75 and 85 percent cacao, sell for as much as $5.99 at Whole Foods.
To become chocolate makers the Quechua first had to decide to be more than just farmers. But they didn’t have the knowledge or experience.
“We wanted change,” said Carlos Pozo, Kallari’s marketing director, “but we didn’t have the capital or anyone who would trust us.”
Then in 1997 they met Judy Logback, a lanky Kansan with wild blond hair who was volunteering for a foundation promoting biodiversity in Ecuador.
“I didn’t show up with a plan,” Ms. Logback said. “I asked them what they wanted.” Mr. Pozo and others said they wanted to sell directly at markets and learn how to grow better, more desirable cacao. They wanted to find a way to survive and thrive as they faced pressure from companies that sought to log their hardwood trees, drill on their land for oil and mine for gold.
Ms. Logback first helped them take their beans over 250 miles to Guayaquil.
“We received threats that the intermediaries would rob or hijack our trucks,” Mr. Pozo said. “In the first years, Kallari was so united that the intermediaries realized they could not break through this union.”
They watched their profits from cacao more than double as they got 48 cents a pound in Guayaquil.
Four years later, they established Kallari, which in Quechua means both “to begin” and “the early times.” The name seemed fitting, Mr. Pozo said: “In the present, we are valuing our past.” With Ms. Logback’s help, the cooperative now includes about 850 families.
“Judy really sacrificed a lot for us,” said Elías Alvarado, Kallari’s director of production and natural resources. “The people in the communities really love her for what she has done.”
As their confidence grew, they decided to sell their cacao directly to big league chocolate makers. They e-mailed makers in North America, attracting the interest of Robert Steinberg, a founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate in Berkeley, Calif. But Dr. Steinberg said that before he could use the beans they needed to be properly fermented, a process that brings out fruit and floral flavors and reduces astringency.
Ms. Logback hired Dr. Jorge Ruiz, who had worked for a cacao cooperative on the coast, to teach the Quechua fermentation. Before his arrival, the Quechua had only fermented their beans inadvertently, when they piled them up before drying. Mr. Ruiz taught them to create fermentation boxes and to monitor temperatures.
In October 2004, Dr. Steinberg made a chocolate bar with Kallari beans and helped them present it at the Terra Madre conference of the Slow Food group in Turin, Italy. Later that year they met officials from the Swiss chocolate company Felchlin, who agreed to pay them 94 cents a pound for their beans.
Inspired by their success, Ms. Logback and Mr. Pozo told Kallari elders that they should start making chocolate.
“They all thought we were crazy,” Mr. Pozo said. “We don’t know anything about this market, what kind of people would buy it, how to make it.”
Chocolate making has always been less common in cacao producing countries than it has been in Europe, where the technology to create chocolate bars was developed and where such a luxury could be more easily afforded.
With a formula from Dr. Steinberg, who died in September, and heavy bushels of cacao, they traveled 12 hours by bus to a shabby community-owned factory in the Andean hill town of Salinas de Guaranda. There they made the first Kallari bars.
“I was confused a bit by what I believed to be chocolate,” said Mr. Alvarado, who had eaten only cheap commercial milk chocolate before he tried the Kallari bars. “Now I realize after all these years that I was eating something that wasn’t really chocolate.”
By tasting it, they could understand their role in the finished product. They improved their farming practices and bean fermentation. Over 500 families received organic status, which was not difficult since most never had the money for fertilizers or other chemicals.
It was difficult, though, to perfect their chocolate production at such a crude facility. In the spring of 2007, Stephen McDonnell, the founder and chief executive of the Applegate Farms organic food company, and his wife, Jill, met Kallari members through their daughter Nora, who visited the Napo region with her seventh-grade class.
With Kallari’s permission and $250,000, Mr. McDonnell established the Kallari Chocolate Company, which lists him as the owner for liability and insurance reasons. All of the profits, though, go back to the Kallari cooperative.
Mr. McDonnell hired Mr. Keme to teach the collective about bean quality and techniques of Swiss chocolate making. He also hired a larger, more efficient chocolate factory in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, to produce the bars based on standards set by Mr. Keme and Mr. Pozo. (The chocolate made in Salinas, less refined and slightly acidic, is sold in some health food stores as Kallari’s Sacha Bar.) Mr. McDonnell asked the farmers to focus on their farming and to master the fermentation of their beans, which the company now buys from Kallari for as much as $1.95 a pound, an astronomical price for the average cacao farmer cooperative.
(Paradoxically, Kallari does not have Fair Trade certification, since it would cost 10 cents per pound of beans and it seemed unfair for Kallari to pay a fee for its own beans.)
Mr. McDonnell has taken a chance, but he says he is not concerned.
“The Kallari people have pride in their farms,” he said, “and are transferring that pride into their bar.”
Plans for their own chocolate factory are in the works and Mr. McDonnell hopes that within three to five years a board of Kallari directors can assume most of his duties.
Kallari farmers also hope to diversify to continue living sustainably off their land. They are planting balsa trees, which grow rapidly, to sell to windmill makers and they want to promote agritourism.
“There was a dream that seemed impossible,” Mr. Pozo said. “Now we believe there are so many possibilities open to us.”
JILL SANTOPIETRO
Photographs of a giant spider eating a bird in an Australian garden have stunned wildlife experts.
The pictures show the spider with its long black legs wrapped around the body of a dead bird suspended in its web.
The startling images were reportedly taken in Atheron, close to Queensland's tropical north.
Despite their unlikely subject matter, the pictures appear to be real.
Joel Shakespeare, head spider keeper at the Australian Reptile Park, said the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver.
"Normally they prey on large insects… it's unusual to see one eating a bird," he told ninemsn.com.
Mr Shakepeare said he had seen Golden Orb Weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger.
Queensland Museum identified the bird as a native finch called the Chestnut-breasted Mannikin.
Mr Shakespeare told ninemsn the bird must have flown into the spider web and become stuck.
"It wouldn't eat the whole bird," he said.
"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.
Greg Czechura from Queensland Museum said cases of the Golden Orb Weaver eating small birds were "well known but rare".
"It builds a very strong web," he said.
But he said the spider would not have attacked until the bird weakened.
The Golden Orb Weaver spins a strong web high in protein because it depends on it to capture large insects for food.
Bonnie MalkinThe astonishing spectacle of a leopard savaging a crocodile has been captured for the first time on camera.
A series of incredible pictures taken at a South African game reserve document the first known time that a leopard has taken on and defeated one of the fearsome reptiles.
The photographs were taken by Hal Brindley, an American wildlife photographer, who was supposed to be taking pictures of hippos from his car in the Kruger National Park.
The giant cat raced out of cover provided by scrub and bushes to surprise the crocodile, which was swimming nearby.
A terrible and bloody struggle ensued. Eventually, onlookers were amazed to see the leopard drag the crocodile from the water as the reptile fought back.
With the crocodile snapping its powerful jaws furiously, the two animals somersaulted and grappled. Despite the crocodile's huge weight and strength, the leopard had the upper hand catching its prey by the throat.
Eventually the big cat was able to sit on top of the reptile and suffocate it.
In the past, there have been reports of crocodiles killing leopards, but this is believed to the first time that the reverse scenario has been observed.
Mr Brindley said: 'I asked many rangers in South Africa if they had ever heard of anything like this and they all said no.
"It just doesn't make sense. The meat you get out of a crocodile is just not worth the risk it takes a predator to acquire. The whole scene happened in the course of about 5 minutes. Then the leopard was gone.
"I drove away, elated in disbelief. It may have been the most amazing thing I've ever seen."
Ellie Rose, a reptile keeper at London Zoo, said: "Normally, crocodiles are well able to defend themselves against attack. I can't think of any examples of this happening before." >>>>
A mouse bit a venomous viper to death after it was thrown into the snake's cage as a lunchtime snack.
The tiny rodent killed the snake after a fierce 30-minute battle, emerging with "barely a scratch on him", according to on person who saw the fight.
Firefighters in Taiwan who were looking after the snake - which had been found in a local resident's home - thought that the live mouse would make a perfect lunchtime treat.
But the furry creature had other ideas. Instead of cowering from the 12in snake's gaping jaws and long fangs, it went on the offensive.
"It attacked the snake continuously, biting and scratching it," one firefighter said.
Viper venom is poisonous for mice, but the snake proved unable to land a killer bite.
"Perhaps it used up all its venom when we caught it but the mouse barely had a scratch on him," said Lan Sengqiu, the leader of the fire team in Nantoun.
Vipers, which have jaws that can open to a 180 degree angle, usually use their venom to immobilise or kill their prey. The poison, which is injected through their hollow fangs, paralyses the nervous system and causes internal bleeding.
Vipers are one of the most widespread species of snake in the world, and their adder sub-species is the only poisonous reptile found in the UK.
A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.
The finding sheds light on the transition between theropods (a group of two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs) and the emergence of birds. Scientists think birds evolved from a group of theropods called maniraptors, some 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period, which lasted from about 206 million to 144 million years ago.
"It's another piece of evidence that's piling onto the list of things that link birds with dinosaurs," said researcher Jeffrey Wilson, a paleontologist at the
Flighty dinosaur
Called Aerosteon riocoloradensis, the bipedal dinosaur would have stood at about 8 feet (2.5 meters) at its hips with a body length of 30 feet (9 meters), about the length of a school bus.
Wilson along with University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and others discovered the skeletal remains of A. riocoloradensis during a 1996 expedition to Argentina. In years following the discovery, the scientists cleaned up the bones and scanned them with computed tomography.
The scans showed small openings in the vertebrae, clavicles (chest bone that forms the wishbone) and hip bones that led into large, hollow spaces. When the dinosaur lived, the hollow spaces would have been lined with soft tissue and filled with air. These chambers resembled such features found in the same bones of modern birds.
While there's no evidence to suggest the dinosaur wore a coat of feathers or flew like a bird when alive, the new findings suggest it breathed like one.
Modern birds have rigid lungs that don't expand and contract like ours. Instead, a system of air sacs pumps air through the lungs. This novel feature is the reason birds can fly higher and faster than bats, which, like all mammals, expand their lungs in a less efficient breathing process.
Other avian air sacs line the spinal column and are thought to lighten birds' skeletal bones, also making flight easier.
"We're beginning to learn more about how the specialized respiratory system of the birds evolved by tracing some of the steps in their ancient relatives," Wilson told LiveScience. "And the cool thing is these animals look nothing like birds."
Lighten the load
Wilson and his colleagues suggest the hollow bones and possible air sacs could have served various purposes, such as making the dinosaurs efficient breathers.
Weighing as much as an elephant, Aerosteon also may have used the openings to shuttle away unwanted heat from its body core, Wilson said.
Another advantage of airy bones would be to shed some pounds from the leviathon. "It may have an important functional role in making the backbone light but also strong," Wilson said of the air-sac system. "When you get big, weight is important."
Several dinosaur fossils have shown suites of bird-like features, though no carnivorous dino has been found with such evidence of air sacs in its clavicle.
For instance, past research has shown maniraptoran dinosaurs, such as velicoraptors and tyrannosaurs, were equipped with structures that move the ribs and sternum during breathing in modern birds.
Scientists also have found air sacs in the vertebrae of sauropods, a group of long-necked, long-tailed, plant-eating dinosaurs that lived in the Late Triassic and Middle Jurassic periods, about 180 million years ago.
The clavicle discovery is detailed today in the online journal PLoS ONE.
The oldest gorilla in captivity, a 55-year-old female named Jenny, has died at the Dallas Zoo — her home for more than half a century, a spokesman said Friday.
Zoo officials decided to euthanize Jenny on Thursday night because of an inoperable tumor in her stomach. Jenny had stopped eating and drinking recently, and tests showed she was unlikely to recover, zoo spokesman Sean Greene said.
"The last couple of weeks we noticed that she hadn't been feeling all that great," Greene said. "It was a quality-of-life decision."
The International Species Information System, which maintains records on animals at 700 institutions around the world, confirmed earlier this year that Jenny was the oldest gorilla in its database.
The zoo held a birthday bash in May to celebrate Jenny's longevity, complete with a cake made of a frozen fruit treats for the guest of honor.
Jenny was said to have a sweet disposition and enjoyed being around people. She was often seen napping below a fig tree in her habitat.
"We had a tough time saying goodbye," said Todd Bowsher, curator of the zoo's mammals in the Wilds of Africa exhibit.
"It's very sad that she's passed on, but what a great life she's had," said Kristen Lukas, curator of conservation and science at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in Ohio and the gorilla species survival plan coordinator for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
Jenny, a Western lowland gorilla, was born in the wild and was acquired by the zoo in 1957. She gave birth in 1965 to a female named Vicki, and officials aren't sure why she didn't conceive again. Vicki was sent to a Canadian zoo at age 5.
At the time of Jenny's death she was one of five gorillas at the Dallas Zoo.
Gorillas in the wild normally live to age 30 or 35, but they can survive years longer in a zoo, with veterinary care and protection from predators. Still, of the roughly 360 gorillas in North American zoos, only four were over 50 as of this spring.
According to the International Species Information System, the oldest living gorilla is now Colo, a 51-year-old female at the Columbus Zoo who was the first gorilla born in captivity.
Just last month, another gorilla at the Dallas Zoo, 43-year-old Hercules, died after undergoing a medical procedure for spinal disease.
In 2004,
It's a fishing tale that packs a wallop so strong it broke the jaw of a southeastern
Seth Russell, 15, of Crossett, was cruising Lake Chicot on a large inner tube towed by a boat when a Silver Asian carp leaped from the water and smacked him in the face. Seth was knocked unconscious.
"He doesn't remember anything at all," the boy's mother, Linda Russell, said last week. "He was laughing, and the next thing he remembers, he is waking in a hospital."
The teen has had oral surgery to wire several teeth together and still experiences back pain that doctors attribute to whiplash from the high-speed collision, his mother said.
He's not the only one who's has a run-in with the "flying" Silver Asian carp.
"They do not fly, but they are quite good jumpers," said Carole Engle, director of aquaculture and the fisheries center at the
"Their jumping behavior is a problem, and their population appears to be growing there," Engle said.
Silver Asian carp were first imported to the
Green polar bears are drawing questions from puzzled visitors at a Japanese zoo.
Three normally white polar bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central
The sight of green polar bears has prompted many questions from visitors concerned about whether the animals are sick or carrying mold, zoo official Masami Kurobe said Sunday.
"Visitors seem to be shocked by the color, and we are asked every day why they are so green," he said.
High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.
Algae that enters hollow spaces in the bears' fur is hard to rinse off, he said.
The bears are expected to return to their natural color when the algae growth subsides in November, Kurobe said. >>>>
Gustav slammed into
Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it hit
Isla de la Juventud civil defense chief Ana Isla said there were "many people injured" on the island south of mainland
"It's been very difficult here," she said on state television.
Authorities evacuated at least 250,000 people from western
Gustav was projected to plow into the Gulf of Mexico at full force Sunday, and reach the
More than a million Americans made wary by Hurricane Katrina took buses, trains, planes and cars as they streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities, where Katrina killed about 1,600 people in 2005.
Forecasters warned it was still too soon to say whether
Gustav already has killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in other
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav could become a Category 5 hurricane soon, with winds above 155 mph (249 kph).
Cuba's top meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said the hurricane's massive center made landfall in mainland Cuba near the community of Los Palacios in Pinar del Rio — a region that produces much of Cuba's famed tobacco and cigars.
In Pinar del
Rubiera said the storm would bring hurricane-force winds to much of the western part of
Felled tree branches and large chunks of muddy earth littered crowded roads.
Authorities boarded up banks, restaurants and hotels, and residents nailed bits of plywood to the windows and doors of their houses and apartments.
"It's very big and we've got to get ready for what's coming," said Jesus Hernandez, a 60-year-old retiree who was using an electric drill to reinforce the roof of his rickety front porch.
The government announced it was stepping up emergency production of bread at state-run bakeries and lines formed all over the city as Cubans waited for loaves.
In tourist-friendly Old Havana, heavy winds and rain battered crumbling historic buildings. There were no immediate reports of major damage, but a scaffolding erected against a building adjacent to the Plaza de Armas was leaning at a dangerous angle.
Lidia Morral and her husband were visiting
"It's been following us all over
By Saturday evening, Gustav was about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west-southwest of Havana and it was moving northwest near 15 mph (24 kph).
The
In the
As of midday Saturday, more than three-fourths of the Gulf's oil production and nearly 40 percent of its natural gas output had been shut down, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore activity.
The U.S. Gulf Coast accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output, according to the MMS. The
On Friday, Gustav rolled over the Cayman Islands with fierce winds that tore down trees and power lines while destroying docks and tossing boats ashore, but there was little major damage and no deaths were reported.
Meanwhile, the hurricane center said Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to near the Turks and Caicos Islands late Sunday or on Monday, then curl through the
As it spun over open waters, Hanna had sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph) Saturday evening and the hurricane center warned that it could kick up dangerous rip currents along parts of the southeastern
The U.S. State Department urged Americans to be aware of the risks caused by Hanna to people traveling to the
Cellular Services Brace for Gustav
With threats that Tropical Storm Gustav will clobber the U.S. Gulf coast, the nation's major cellular network providers say they are prepared, having learned from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina three years ago.
Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. have separately issued statements saying they each have spent about US$140 million in the
The spending was on many areas of emergency management, including the building of new digital cell sites. But a big focus, Sprint said in a statement, has been on maintaining power to cellular operations with various forms of power generators.
"One of the primary reasons for the loss of wireless service in a hurricane is the loss of commercial power to the cell site," Sprint said. In 2007, Sprint spent nearly $60 million on construction of permanent generators at 1,300 locations in the Gulf region to power critical wireless locations and network facilities, as well as for portable generators and cell sites on wheels. If power goes out to a cell site or a group of cell sites, such equipment provides a backup.
Sprint also said it has invested $27 million to expands its emergency response team to aid first responders such as police and firefighters. That group is deploying proprietary technology in the region, called Satellite Cell on Light Trucks, to improve communications among emergency responders. A major concern during Katrina was that emergency personnel could not communicate with one another because of radios running different frequencies or different protocols.
Sprint and Verizon said they have disaster response vehicles at the ready. Verizon said it has a new 35-foot trailer devoted to emergency responses in the region and has added 59 new digital sites in the region, most with their own on-site generators.
AT&T is already activating plans to set up base camps with tents and bathrooms for its Texas-based repair workers to be located at the best spot when Gustav's eventual track becomes clearer. Dan Feldstein, an AT&T spokesman based in
"Neither caused terrible damage but they were serious and our crews got a good workout," Feldstein said in a telephone interview. "The crews got in fast with generators and it was very impressive. Every storm that happens, including Katrina, presents lessons to be learned."
One tip: Use text instead of voice
All the cellular providers offered tips to users in the event a storm hits and wireless networks become congested, as they did with Katrina. One of the common tips was to urge users to text instead of using voice if a crisis occurs, since text places less demand on the network.
For landline users, Feldstein said to remember that a cordless phone in the house might not work without power, meaning it might be time to pull out an old conventional phone to load into the phone jack directly, since some power is transmitted over the phone line.
Other tips include carrying extra batteries for your cell phone and to use a car adapter for recharging the phone battery in the car.
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Interesting first article... 
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 and air sacs (other colors) as they might have been in life about 85 million years ago. Credit: Todd Marshall c 2008, courtesy of Project Exploration.&title=){kind=link}