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All, Mission To The World, the PCA's international ministry, has issued an appeal for funds to aid in the relief of Myanmar cyclone victims. I know that most of us have heard stories about countries and large relief agencies having their hands tied, but God will provide a way for His church to break through manmade barriers. _________________________________________________________________ Horrifying and harrowing stories are emerging in the aftermath of the catastrophic tropical cyclone that devastated much of already poverty-striken Myanmar. Reuters News is reporting as many as one million people left homeless. No one really knows how high the death toll...

Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has reached that the U.N. warned on Wednesday of a "second wave of deaths" among an estimated 2 million survivors. The U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that "a significant tropical cyclone" will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area. The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, leaving at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing, according to the government. The U.N. says the death toll could exceed 100,000. An estimated 2 million survivors...

To: All I want to let the chinese that are really here for support know that I am sorry for being so rude,and crass during this time. Now I do not like the CCP at all and belive in democracy for everyone. I feel angry and jaded at the world at this moment in my life because someone really close to me in my family died a few weeks ago. I have had a rough year and can be very snappy and mean at times. I do apologize and my prayers go out to all the innocents lost. I was...

Help for the survivors of Cyclone Nargis is on the way from Water Missions International (WMI). WMI is preparing 44 water purification systems for immediate deployment to aid survivors of last Saturday's deadly cyclone in Myanmar. The 44 Living Water(TM) Treatment Systems (LWTS(TM)) have been requested from other organizations around the United States who are working to get relief to the people of Myanmar. World Vision has requested 20 water systems, Operation Blessing has requested up to 12, and Samaritan's Purse has asked for 12 water systems to be ready for transport this Friday, May 9. According to a media...

World food prices may worsen Burmese disaster 14:49 06 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie As the scale of the disaster in Burma caused by Cyclone Nargis starts to emerge, relief agencies and rich countries are lining up to provide emergency aid. But with agencies already hit hard by soaring food prices, and Burma's own rice crop devastated, it is not clear where the relief will come from. Nargis hit Burma on Saturday, bringing with it a reported oceanic storm surge more than 3 metres high, which is said to have destroyed some low-lying towns. The storm wreaked havoc...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is calling on Republicans to seek "real change to avoid a real disaster" in the wake of another Democratic victory in a special election on Saturday. In a letter to House Republicans posted on www.newt.org, Gingrich urges House leaders to call an “emergency meeting” of House Republicans to address what he describes as a “catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans.” “If a majority of the House Republicans vote for real change, they should instruct Republican Leader John Boehner [Ohio] and his team to come back with a new plan by the Wednesday before the...

Foreign aid workers in Burma have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in Saturday’s cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, in a disaster whose scale invites comparison with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday. He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people. "Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute...

Dr. Weiss spoke exclusively to Catholic Online about his experience in the dramatic events which occurred in Suffolk on Monday. He told of a medical community and facility which, through their response, transformed tragedy into triumph.

Summit to combat fuel poverty a 'disaster', campaigners sayMiles Brignall The Guardian Thursday April 24 2008 One of Britain's biggest charities has condemned yesterday's energy industry summit as a "disaster" for the 4.5m households living in fuel poverty. Mervyn Kohler, special adviser to Help the Aged, described the lack of concrete measures to come out of the summit as a slap in the face to the poorest consumers - those who are forced to spend at least 10% of their income to heat and light their home. Seven government ministers and representatives from each of the big power companies attended...

The description of the Fed as the "lender of last resort" is accurate without being informative. Lender to whom? For what purposes? Last resort before what? Did the bank "lend" $29 billion to Bear Stearns, or did it, in effect, buy some of the most problematic securities owned by Bear? If so, was this faux "loan" actually to J.P. Morgan Chase? The purpose of the money was to give Morgan an incentive to buy Bear -- at a price so low that an incentive should have been superfluous.In 1979, when the government undertook to rescue Chrysler, conservatives worried not that...

(04-14) 11:32 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A strong and potentially deadly earthquake is virtually certain to strike on one of California's major seismic faults with a magnitude of at least 6.7 within the next 30 years, scientists said Monday in releasing the first official forecast of statewide earthquake probabilities.

Italians vote as economic disaster looms By Malcolm Moore in Rome Last Updated: 2:41am BST 14/04/2008 Voting began yesterday in Italy's general election but the winner will inherit a country on the brink of disaster. A man in Sorrento was arrested after he announced 'politics makes me sick' and ate his ballot paper According to the International Monetary Fund, Italy's economic growth will not rise above 0.3 per cent this year, and could be zero. The country's growth is the slowest in Europe and Mario Draghi, the governor of the Bank of Italy, warned that "the crisis is not yet...

A DEMOCRATIC disaster in the November election looms, but it can be avoided by a demonstration of true leadership by the two candidates. By the end of the primary process, no matter how robust the turnout appears, less than half of all Democratic voters will have expressed their preference. And because the primaries will have extended over such a long period, some voters will have changed their preference by the convention in August. Other entanglements also threaten the possibility of a selection at the convention that would be supported by both constituencies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Two states...

** EXCERPT ** Until recent weeks, one of the least understood aspects of the Democrats' primary contest was the role of superdelegates. These are Democratic Party insiders, members of Congress, and other officials who can cast ballots at the party's national convention this summer.But now these unelected delegates are coming in for a close inspection, because neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can win their party's nomination without superdelegate support. The big Pennsylvania primary on April 22, for example, has only 158 delegates at stake (each of them will be pledged to support one of the candidates). By comparison, there...

How badly would an American pullout affect Iraq?  According to the nation’s foreign minister, all of the security gains would evaporate and bring the country back to the brink of civil war.  Hoshyar Zebari spoke to the Associated Press to make sure Americans know exactly what is at stake: Iraq’s foreign minister said Tuesday that he believes his country has averted a civil war after five years of “tears and blood,” and warned that an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal would be disastrous.Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that mistakes had been made by all sides but Iraq has...

The rush towards biofuels is theatening world food production and the lives of billions of people, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser said yesterday. Professor John Beddington put himself at odds with ministers who have committed Britain to large increases in the use of biofuels over the coming decades. In his first important public speech since he was appointed, he described the potential impacts of food shortages as the “elephant in the room” and a problem which rivalled that of climate change. “It’s very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and...

Severe snow disasters have left 1.65 million people snowblind and frostbitten, 500,000 livestock and wildlife dead and 3.1 million others on verge of starvation in Tibetan prefectures of northwestern Qinghai Province. Since October last year, consecutive low temperature had gripped the province. The temperature plunged to minus 36.3 degrees centigrade, the record lowest in January in the province, said the provincial meteorological bureau. In Yushu, Guoluo and Huangnan Tibet Autonomous Prefectures, most of the grassland was covered by snow, usually 16 to 32 cm thick, which had brought great losses to local animal husbandry. In the disaster-stricken prefectures, 130,000 people...

Citigroup has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Citigroup Headquarters The largest U.S. bank suspended redemptions in CSO Partners, a fund specializing in corporate debt, after investors tried to pull more than 30 percent of its roughly $500 million of assets, the newspaper said. Citigroup injected $100 million to stabilize the fund, which lost 10.9 percent last year, the newspaper said. The fund's manager, John Pickett, left following a dispute with Citigroup executives and complaints...

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 6, 2008 – More than 160 National Guard members turned out today to support recovery missions in three states hit by a violent string of tornadoes last night. The National Guard Bureau reported that Guard members were called out to perform search and rescue missions, provide security at traffic control points, and to support civilian authorities in other ways in Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Many of the Guard soldiers who responded were undergoing pre-deployment training at the Wendell H. Ford Regional Training Center in Greenville, Ky., about five miles from one of the areas hit by a...

Tonight’s Super Tuesday Primary leaves little to be positive about, even for McCain supporters. Tuesday merely proved the degree to which the GOP is fractured, unenthusiastic, and weak. Romney and Huckabee still have life in them, but McCain was the night’s big winner. November is well off, but at this stage the fall forecast is dim. The Republicans will be entering the race with a 72 year old Senator, despised by large swathes of his own base, sluggishly propelled by a divided and deeply demoralized GOP electorate that is likely to produce an anemic campaign war chest. By contrast, the...

Marketplace, January 8, 2008—Mike Huckabee is right that our tax system badly needs reform. But his proposed plan, the FairTax, would be a disaster. Sure, the FairTax sounds great. Dump all current federal taxes. Abolish the IRS! And replace them with a simple 23 percent national sales tax. Every household would get an annual "prebate"—Free money!—to help them handle the tax. Only problem is that it really is just too good to be true. First, there's fuzzy math: Say you buy something for $10 and $3 is added to the price. That sounds like a 30 percent sales tax, but...

More than a quarter-century after completing his term of office, James Earl Carter is still to be found in the thick of debates about national policies on a range of issues: nuclear arms, Iraq, North Korea, and, especially, the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. A steady stream of books and articles continues to issue forth from his pen, and he travels the world on self-selected diplomatic missions. No other former President has chosen to play a similar role. But then, Carter’s whole political career has been out of the ordinary. In order to understand the man today, it is...

Groups that support a crackdown on illegal aliens havn't settled on their champion in the race for the White House, but there's little doubt which Republican scares them the most - former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. "He was an absolute disaster on immigration as governor," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that played a mojor role in rallying the phone calls that helped defeat this year's Senate immigration bill. "Every time there was any enforcement in his state, he took the side of the illegal aliens." Just as problematic for the former Arkansas governor, however, is that the...

As I sit here looking out toward the Santa Monica Mountains, I can barely see the buildings 2 miles away which are now mostly obscured by smoke. My West Los Angeles area has been mostly clear of any smoke until the wind direction began to change. Until then, most all of the smoke from the Southern California wildfires was being blown out over the ocean by the offshore Santa Anna winds coming off the desert. Now the smoke seems to be backing up against the hills that surround Los Angeles. With the mountains between me and the San Fernando Valley...

(2007-10-29) — With the success of last week’s simulated news conference on the California wildfires by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), mid-level bureaucrats at the disaster-relief agency have reportedly initiated plans to stage “natural” disasters as well. The imitation news briefing, which featured FEMA employees pretending to be genuine journalists, was “just a test run for the more ambitious pilot program of engineered catastrophes designed to help even out the work flow during the year,” according to one unnamed source inside the agency. “Due to the unreliable nature of floods, wildfires, tornadoes and blizzards,” the source said, “FEMA employees...

At this writing, the fires were still raging in southern California, but already LCMS World Relief and Human Care had sent $50,000 to the Synod's Pacific Southwest District to help those who have been evacuated from -- or lost -- their homes in the disaster. The emergency grant was sent Oct. 24 to the district office in Irvine, Calif., north of San Diego, Escondido, and other cities threatened by more than a dozen wildfires. The money will be distributed among LCMS congregations that have been providing shelter and spiritual care to scores of displaced people. In cooperation with the city...

Georgia Seeks Water Disaster Declaration Saturday October 20, 2007 4:46 PM By GREG BLUESTEIN Associated Press Writer CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area. Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower. Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal...

NEW YORK (AP) — If some people thought traveling to Iraq and Syria was a ratings stunt for Katie Couric, it didn't work out that way. The "CBS Evening News" tied a record low with just under 5.5 million viewers last week, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday. Last week and Memorial Day week are the two least-watched CBS evening newscasts since at least 1987, and probably far earlier. CBS said it wasn't surprising, and argued that last week's numbers were artificially deflated because of U.S. Open coverage.

Warning of tsunami greater than 2004 By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 05/09/2007 Tens of millions of people who live in the Bay of Bengal face the threat of a tsunami as massive as the one that devastated the Sumatran coast in 2004, a leading geologist warns today. Satellite images showing Banda Aceh before (top) and after (bottom) the 2004 tsunami While the Boxing Day 2004 disaster took the scientific community by surprise, killing around a quarter of a million people, one geologist who had sounded the alert about the dangers in the Indian Ocean now says...

Complete Hell 26 Aug 2007 16:36:00 By Annita Paschalinou Sources: �ΕΤ - �ΕΤ 105.8 - ΑNA Firefighters and people are battling against tens of fires raging in the largest part of the country , while efforts to the point of sacrifice are made in Ancient Olympia where flames are threatening the ancient ruins and the museum of Olympia, a world heritage site. According to NET correspondents the fire is approaching the village’s medical center while it has burned many houses. Kronio hill is on fire. Four firefighting aircrafts and four helicopters are dropping water to save the ancient monuments from...

Rate cuts won't cure ailing market Ben Bernanke and his Fed cohorts will get cheap money flowing with a series of interest-rate cuts. But that won't fix the credit crunch. August 23, 2007 -- 16:20 ET Jon Markman In a country whose populist heroes are kick-ass rebels Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne and Bart Simpson, it is perhaps only fitting that our latest would-be real-world savior is an economist and banker whose monkish beard makes him look almost countercultural. Unlike his fictional counterparts who always save the day with a snappy remark or a chop to the throat, Federal Reserve chief...

Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse: Failure Analysis The I-35 West bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, consisted of three trussed spans and several beam and post spans typical of 1960's era freeway construction. Analysis to date here at Free Republic has centered on looking for the triggering cause in the bridge collapse, and the sequence of failure, as determined by available pre- and post-collapse imagery and video. Efforts so far have been hampered by uncertainty regarding the condition and disposition of the eastern truss panels originally located above and near pier 6. I hope to rectify this uncertainty and...

Thousands of people in northern Norway were left without telephone and internet connections earlier this week after a clumsy moose destroyed a switching station.

‘Strip risks becoming virtually 100 percent aid dependent and isolated within a matter of months or weeks if the present regime of closure continues,’ says deputy head of UN Relief and Works Agency Associated Press Published: 08.09.07, 21:36 / Israel News The Gaza Strip will soon become entirely dependent on foreign aid and face “disastrous consequences” if the Hamas-run territory remains sealed off, the UN cautioned on Thursday, while a Palestinian business group warned that at least 120,000 more Gazans could lose their jobs. Israel and Egypt closed their crossings with Gaza to all but humanitarian aid after the Islamic...

Joe Rasch and his two daughters, Emily and Elizabeth, were looking for agates on the Lake Superior coastline last Friday. Instead, they found a piece of history - a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald. Rasch admits he didn't realize what he found when he first saw the orange ring lying under a with pine tree that had fallen. Only when his daughter Emily read the words on the ring, it hit him. "It was pretty hard to read," Emily said. "I saw the Ed pretty good, then Fitz, so." They made the discovery near the Keweenau Peninsula, about 200 miles...

I decided to see if I could get a look at President Bush as he visited the bridge disaster area this morning. I knew Marine One would make a couple of low passes before landing so I went over to the media area that was setup, thinking that he would be landing there. No such luck. Marine One flew over us a couple of times but landed elsewhere. Oh well!Marine One Landing While it was fun to see Marine One, I wasn't totally disappointed. There was a little street entertainment from a couple of left-wing protesters. I do love clowns!...

The collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions but it was followed by bravery, stories of heroism and miracles also on a grand scale. Top fire fighter, Chief Jim Clark of the Minneapolis Fire Department exclaimed that the first miracle was the low death toll. Clark said, ““We were surprised that we didn’t have more people seriously injured and killed, I think it was something of a miracle.” With upwards of 500 cars crossing the bridge at any given moment that qualifies as a miracle for most of us.

Disaster looms in land built for peace and harmony Politicians fear civil war as Musharraf's regime is battered by suicide attacks, civilian revolt and American threats Declan Walsh in Islamabad Thursday August 2, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Lawyers celebrate after the Pakistani supreme court threw out President Perveaz Musharraf's case against the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Photograph: T Mughal/EPA Decorum was abandoned as accusations ricocheted between the wood-panelled walls of Pakistan's national assembly on Monday night. "Murderers! Murderers of innocent people!" screamed an MP from a religious party, his yellow turban shaking as he wagged a finger towards the...

Sakhalin seismologists continue to register earth shocks measuring 3-4 on the Richter scale which occur every 1-1.5 hours. According to the latest data, the earthquake’s epicenter is moving towards the regional centre Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk city.

Sakhalin seismologists continue to register earth shocks measuring 3-4 on the Richter scale which occur every 1-1.5 hours. According to the latest data, the earthquake’s epicenter is moving towards the regional centre Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk city.

The State is telling us, again, to prepare for DISASTER. It's called the Code Ready program. Don’t worry, don’t panic, but just in case something happens, be prepared to sit in the basement eating cold beans while civilized society comes to a shuddering, agonizing end. Have a wind-up radio so you can get instructions and drown out the screams. You’re supposed to have duct tape and plastic sheets, which makes it sound like you’re going to spend the crisis as a serial killer trying to get rid of the bodies. I don’t think we’ll see people looting Plastic Sheets ‘n’...

The Senate debate over the immigration compromise bill was showing signs of trouble Tuesday as leaders began shifting blame to opposing sides on problems that had yet to be resolved.

The amnesty bill in the Senate is undoubtedly one of the worst, most destructive pieces of legislation to come down the pike in the last half century and not only could it do cataclysmic damage to the Republican Party, it has the potential to send our country into a downward spiral from which it would never truly recover. Not only would this bill fail to secure the border, it would encourage millions of new illegals to pour into the country, demographically flood the conservative movement out of existence, add more than two trillion to the national debt, and it would...

Pakistan on brink of disaster as Karachi burns By Isambard Wilkinson and Massoud Ansari in Karachi, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 12/05/2007 Chaos gripped the streets of Karachi yesterday as gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured, threatening a complete breakdown of law and order in Pakistan's largest and most volatile city. With plumes of black smoke billowing over the city of 12 million people, there were extraordinary scenes as gunmen on motorbikes pumped bullets into crowds demonstrating against Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, while police stood by and watched. Gun battles left at least...

Politicizing natural disasters is pretty heartless. Just ask Ray Nagin. Or ask the homeless citizens of Greensburg, Kansas. Their homes, their businesses, and their lives have been torn apart by bad luck and worse weather. The last thing they needed was to be turned into a political football. But today, as George Bush and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius meet on an empty field that used to be a town, that’s exactly what the people of Greensburg have become. It’s been less than a week since a mammoth tornado tore apart the small, south-central Kansas hamlet that, until 9:45 last Friday...

Critics of the Iraq war said on Tuesday the Bush administration's failure to replenish vital National Guard equipment sent to Iraq caused Kansas to fall short in responding to last week's tornado disaster, and other states were equally vulnerable. The White House and the Pentagon rebuffed the criticism, saying Kansas and other states had adequate resources that they could share in event of disasters like the Kansas tornado that leveled one small town on Friday and killed 10 in the area. The debate was ignited by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, who said on Monday the federal government had...

A heads-up to anybody who may be concerned -- tornado warnings are currently out for the area to the southwest of Greensburg with radar indicating the storms are moving toward that devastated town. The National Weather Service has issued tornado warnings along with baseball sized hail alerts for the area southwest of Woodward and Freedom, Oklahoma. Two nights ago, the same area was subject to the storm which passed over Woodward and then continued northeast to Greensburg. Tornado warnings have also been issued for an area south of Protection, Kansas (a small town southwest of Greensburg). Looks like it's going...

Comets and disaster in the Bronze AgeCosmic impact is gaining ground as an explanation of the collapse of civilisations, writes Benny Peiser At some time around 2300BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age societies in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more...

On April 16 1947, the cargo ship SS Grandcamp exploded in the harbor of Texas City Tx. The Grandcamp was carrying 8.5 million tons of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used fertilizer. The SS Grandcamp was also carrying a cargo of small-arms ammunition. At 8:10AM, a small fire was reported in the hold of the Grandcamp. A later investigation determined that spontaneous combustion (or a discarded cigarette) was the cause of the fire. Shortly afterwards, the Texas City Fire Department was called to the dock where the Grandcamp was located. Around 9:00AM, the captain of the Grandcamp oreded that the hull...