-7.29.07- Typhoon Usagi, or the �Rabbit� Typhoon as translated from Japanese, is forecast to approach Japan, making landfall sometime early on Thursday 2nd August. On Monday morning Usagi was situated some 290nm southeast of the island Iwo To and is set to track north-northwest over the next few days on a course for Japan. At present it is packing winds of over 80mph (140km/h) with gusts over 100mph (170km/h). קרא עוד

-7.28.07- While fierce storms have swept across central and northern China this summer, triggering floods and landslides and leaving hundreds dead, parts of the south are suffering from severe drought. Floods have hit nearly half of China�s regions this summer, with the Yangtze River level having reportedly risen to 25.1 meters on Friday. The river�s danger level is 27.3 meters, and the level is expected to keep rising in the next few day�s with further heavy rain forecast. קרא עוד

MIAMI – Nearly eight weeks have passed since the last tropical storm in the Atlantic-Caribbean region faded away, but banish any notion the 2007 hurricane season has been unusually slow and beware the coming months, experts say. The peak of the six-month season is just around the corner and forecasters are still predicting a busy one. קרא עוד

GUWAHATI, India -7.30.07- Monsoon flooding killed at least 29 people in eastern India and Bangladesh, officials said on Monday, as hundreds of thousands remained displaced from their homes or cut off in their villages. In the Indian states of Assam and Bihar, לפחות 24 אנשים, including three children, were killed in weather-related incidents since Sunday morning, bringing the death toll to 75 in a week קרא עוד

MOSCOW – 7.26.07- Thawing sea ice in the Arctic could have a chilling effect on ties among countries that share the area, especially now that a Russian ship is headed for the North Pole. The expedition plans to send a mini-submarine crew to plant a flag on the seabed and symbolically claim the Arctic for the Kremlin. “The Arctic is Russian,” expedition leader and parliamentary deputy Artur Chilingarov told Russian television. “We are going to be the first to put a flag there, a Russian flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, at the very point of the North Pole.” קרא עוד

WASHINGTON – The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say. קרא עוד

HELENA, Mont. �7 New wildfires in Montana over the weekend added to firefighters’ onerous job on Monday, and at least two of them threatened homes. Eighty homes were ordered evacuated. One blaze, discovered Saturday and believed to have been human-caused, had burned about 1,000 acres along Interstate 90 in western Montana southeast of Missoula. Residents of about 40 homes were asked to leave, according to fire information officials. קרא עוד

TOKYO � 7.29.07- A tropical storm formed about 620 miles southeast of Tokyo on Sunday and approached a remote Japanese island chain, Japan’s Meteorological Agency reported. Tropical Storm Usagi, located near the Northern Mariana Islands, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, was moving west at 19 mph, the agency said in a statement. קרא עוד

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) �7.27.07- Firefighters have central Utah’s Salt Creek fire 50% contained. A wave of summer rainstorms dropped about an inch of rain on the fire burning about 85 miles south of Salt Lake City. The fire, which destroyed a private campground and a small motel, started July 19 and has burned about 39 square miles east of Nephi and across two counties. קרא עוד

AUSTIN � They congregate on patios, slip into stairwells and, if they’re crunched under foot, oh do they stink. Crickets are here in force, annoying Texans earlier than usual � thanks to the year’s wet weather in much of the state. The problem is so bad at the University of Texas at Austin that school officials are taking the unusual step of darkening the 307-foot-tall bell tower for three nights the next two weekends in hopes of keeping the insects away. The bugs are attracted to lights. קרא עוד