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Topsail Island, North Carolina © joanneleon
News
Atlantic City Press, Posted: Sunday, August 28, 2011 5:49 am | Updated: 7:49 am
Hurricane Irene makes landfall near Beach Haven; flooding, power outages reported across South Jersey
Hurricane Irene rolled along South Jersey's coastline Sunday morning - passing within 10 miles of Ocean City before making landfall near Beach Haven, the National Hurricane Center confirmed.
The hurricane made landfall at 5:40 a.m. near Little Egg Inlet, with winds of 75 miles per hour.
This is the first hurricane to strike South Jersey since 1903.
The storm remained a Category 1 hurricane at 5 a.m. as it approached Atlantic City's shoreline, according to Weather.com.
The previous night, the storm knocked out power to more than 100,000 Atlantic City Electric customers and flooded area roadways.
Wind and Rain From Hurricane Irene Lash New York
Hurricane Irene made landfall on the coast of New Jersey early Sunday morning and continued its relentless push to the New York City area, shutting down mass transit, causing flooding and cutting power to more than a million people.
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New York was the next major city in the hurricane’s path, and forecasters predicted the center of the storm would reach the area about 10 a.m. on Sunday.
Officials in the city and on Long Island warned that a big problem could be flooding at high tide, around 8 a.m. on Sunday morning — before the storm has moved on and the wind has abated. The storm is expected to pass through the New York City area by Sunday afternoon before moving into southern New England.
But forecasts on Sunday morning offered some encouragement. City officials said it appeared that the hurricane was moving more quickly than they expected; if that remained the case, it could mean less damage as the storm passes through the metropolitan area.
At Least 8 Dead as Hurricane Irene Slams Into US East Coast
Some 2 million homes and businesses are without power in the eastern U.S., with at least eight people killed. Tens of millions of people are in the path of the storm, which is passing through some of the country's most densely populated areas. Suspected tornadoes spurned by the hurricane destroyed homes in Delaware and Virginia. Tornado warnings are in place for New York and other areas.
Did We Drop the Ball on Unemployment?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: August 27, 2011
WHEN I’m in New York or Washington, people talk passionately about debt and political battles. But in the living rooms or on the front porches here in Yamhill, Ore., where I grew up, a different specter wakes friends up in the middle of the night.
It’s unemployment.
Scientists Find Huge Underground River Below Amazon (VIDEO)
Have you heard of a river flowing under a river? In an amazing discovery, scientists have found signs of an underground river flowing below the Amazon.
Researchers at the department of geophysics of the Brazil National Observatory have showed evidence of the existence of an underground river that flows 13,000 feet beneath the Amazon.
Planet Made of Diamonds Discovered
The carbon-based planet is denser than any previously discovered. A diamond forms when carbon is put under immense pressure, so scientists speculate that the conditions are right for much of the planet to be crystalline -- in other words, a giant celestial diamond.
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Located about 4,000 light years away in the constellation Serpens, the planet is in a tight orbit around a type of tiny dead neutron star known as a pulsar, completing its revolution around the pulsar every two hours and 10 minutes. Pulsars regularly emit bursts of radiation , which allowed scientists to detect this one, called PSR J1719-1438. They realized that the radiation beams were being modulated by a small planet, which then led them to the "diamond planet."
New power wave heads out to sea
An explosion of designs for harvesting wave energy could make the process competitive at last – and they're heading out to the ocean for testing
WRINGING electricity from the sea is no small task. But as firms start to test their wave-energy harvesters in the open ocean that could be about to change.
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Pelamis Wave Power's wave energy device, P2, is a case in point. Currently stored at the Leith Docks in Edinburgh, UK, it uses spools of steel cable several times human height, and floats that are as big as a car. But this is just window dressing for the machine itself: a red rig that looks like a 180-metre-long subway train.
Months after disaster, Japan's prime minister resigns
In a nationally televised speech, Kan announced that he was relinquishing his post as chief of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ, effectively ending a 15-month tenure as national leader. Kan had said he would quit once lawmakers passed three key pieces of post-tsunami recovery legislation, the last two of which cleared parliament on Friday.
Potential successors include Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Trade Minister Banri Kaieda and former Foreign Minister Seji Maehara, a security hawk who has proclaimed that boosting growth and pashing out nuclear power are among his top priorities.
The winner, who would become the nation's sixth prime minister since 2006, faces challenges that include continued rebuilding following the March disaster, forging a new nuclear policy and curbing a public debt that is already twice the size of the nation's $5 trillion economy. The new leader will also need to mend fences with the United States over the relocation of an American military base on Okinawa. Kan had recently canceled talks with President Barack Obama due to uncertainty over his political future.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Give Pacifism a Chance
Some of what the American peace movement fought for has come to pass: there is no draft, there are no special taxes raised to pay for war, the threat of nuclear Armageddon has receded and the country plays a leading, if controversial, role in multilateral institutions. Rooting out terrorists and intervening in civil conflicts, soldiers often do more police work than conventional combat.
The results have been mixed, though, and in some ways at odds with pacifism’s longer-term goals. Most people don’t want to think of war, and thanks to the lack of a draft, most don’t have to. Huge worldwide protests against sending soldiers into Iraq in 2003 were a sideshow for many people. Significant antiwar sentiment over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has mostly challenged the time, the place, the conduct and the costs of deployment, not the use of force itself. Those who are on active duty — less than one percent of the population — and their families bear most of the burdens.
Such complacency has allowed for the possibility of unending war. Because of the nature of intelligence gathering and weapons technology like drones, the government can use deadly force without popular support or approval. The president has claimed — and we have given him — extraordinary powers.
We should respect the sacrifices of soldiers and the complexity of governing in a dangerous world. But war has a way of coming home, eroding our democratic culture as well as our safety. American pacifists of the past knew that, and we need people like them today: people who don’t believe war is inevitable, who will challenge what we assume and accept, and who will work to end it.
Moqtada al-Sadr pushes for protests in Iraq after Muslim holy month of Ramadan
BAGHDAD — Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has released a letter calling on his followers in Iraq to demonstrate “in millions” after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends next week.
In the letter, released late Friday, Sadr urged his followers to demonstrate against the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying it has not done enough to improve public services. Many Iraqis do not have full electricity in their homes or sufficient running water.
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In the spring, he paraded with members of his Mahdi Army through Baghdad’s Shiite slum, Sadr City, to demand that U.S. forces leave Iraq, and recently he created a buzz on the Web by appearing in military garb and draped in the Iraqi flag, attended by a soldier wearing a ski mask. Members of the Mahdi Army’s armed militia, the Promised Day Brigade, have asserted responsibility in recent weeks for more than 16 attacks on U.S. forces in the south.
Iraq: 33 killed in fiery day across Iraq
Suicide Bombers Escalate Assaults on Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — Suicide bombers stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in advance of Id al-Fitr, the festival next week that celebrates the end of Ramadan. But though Afghan security forces were the intended targets, civilians took the biggest toll.
Three separate blasts in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces left at least seven civilians dead, four of them children, and wounded dozens more, Afghan officials said. The attacks continued a pattern of violence across the country that is taking a disproportionately larger toll on ordinary citizens than on government and coalition forces. At least 17 civilians have been killed in the past three days in scattered attacks across the country, including five in a NATO airstrike.
Arab League recognises Libyan NTC
The regional bloc re-admits Libya's membership, turning over the country's seat to the rebels' political leadership.
The Arab League has restored Libya's membership in the bloc, turning over the country's seat to the National Transitional Council (NTC), the rebels' political leadership.
The 22-member League suspended the country's membership in February in protest to Muammar Gaddafi's crackdown on demonstrators.
At a Saturday League session, Mahmoud Jibril, seen as the foreign minister of the National Transitional Council led the Libyan delegation in the meeting.
He urged the Arabs to help rebuild and stabilise his country and asked the League to help in unfreezing Libyan assets abroad.
Libyan tribesmen want rebel army chief's killers named
BENGHAZI, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The influential Libyan tribe of a slain rebel army commander vowed on Saturday to take justice into their own hands if rebel leaders do not release the results of an investigation into his death by the end of Ramadan.
Abdel Fattah Younes, the interior minister under Muammar Gaddafi who defected near the outset of Libya's six-month uprising, was killed on July 28 after rebel leaders summoned him for questioning, infuriating members of his family and tribe.
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"We need to prevent the tyranny of Gaddafi turning into the tyranny of those ideological groups," said Mohammed Hamid, Younes' nephew. "There are those who want the country to be run by militias like Afghanistan."