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The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found. The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit “coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral.” Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to...

"Using sophisticated seismometers and global positioning systems, scientists have been able to track minute movements along two massive tectonic plates colliding 25 miles or so underneath the Puget Sound basin. Their early findings suggest a mega-earthquake could strike closer to Tacoma and Seattle than earlier thought. [snip] Earlier calculations creating a virtual earthquake using a supercomputer indicated that such a mega-earthquake in the Northwest could result in ground motion of 1.5 feet per second in Seattle, nearly six inches per second in Tacoma, Olympia and Vancouver, and three inches in Portland. That would be more than enough to cause major...

A majority of Indonesians would like to see Sharia law implemented in their country, a new poll shows, although only a minority favour the harsh measures sometimes associated with the system. The poll of 8,000 people in the world's most populous Muslim country, home to 200 million Muslims, found that 52 per cent favoured some form of Islamic legal code, such as religious arbitration in family disputes. Asked if women should be made to wear a head scarf 45 per cent said yes, while 40 per cent favoured chopping off the hands of thieves. "A lot of people think the...

Tsunamis Slap Hawaii, Calif. North Coast Thursday November 16, 2006 10:01 PM By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press Writer HONOLULU (AP) - Tsunamis generated by a major earthquake near Japan left behind little damage but offered a legitimate test of international warning systems. The waves, some measuring a few feet high, struck Hawaii shores Wednesday, slightly injuring one swimmer and temporarily flooding a harbor. A surge along California's northern coast destroyed two docks in Crescent City Harbor and damaged a third. The waves hit Hawaii about six hours after a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck north of Japan. Tsunami warnings were issued...

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year. Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. Robertson said the revelations about this year's weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January. "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he...

CAMPBELL BAY, India (AFP) - Some 150 members of a nearly extinct aboriginal tribe are missing after deadly tsunamis that lashed India's far-flung Andaman and Nicobar islands. But the Indian government, which administers the archipelago, says the nearly extinct Shompen tribal people, who numbered 389 before the December 26 tsunamis, were safe, although they have yet to make contact with all of them. Before the towering waves smashed into the islands, the hunter-gatherer tribe lived in tiny bands in 12 areas among river bank mangroves, mainly bunched in Great Nicobar island's east and west. "There's no news of seven bands...

Six Tsunamis By Angela Logomasini Imagine that every year the world suffered from six or more tsunamis producing the horrific death toll recently experienced. That's how many people die every year from malaria alone, and the tsunami may contribute to even higher rates this year. That disaster has created new habitat suitable for the proliferation of malaria and other disease-carrying mosquitoes. Public health officials can take steps to reduce the impact, one of which involves using the controversial pesticide DDT. Since the 1960s green activists pushed bans of the substance around the world based largely on false claims about its...

Explore one of the most dangerous and enigmatic forces on earth, tsunamis. See the science behind their devastating power. Understand where they come from and what we can do to better prepare. It's not if it will happen again, but when.

Global Warming vs. Tsunamis? Tsunamis Win By Roy Spencer After the horrific loss of life in the Indian Ocean region from the record earthquake and resulting tsunami last week, I was struck by the immensity of what had happened. While scientists continue to argue over whether we can even measure mankind's influence on weather or climate in the face of naturally occurring hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, cold waves, blizzards, and floods, Mother Nature shows us that she still rules the day. There is no question that the Earth knows that humans live here -- six billion people are going to...

RIYADH (AFP) - Saudi Arabia announced that it was increasing its aid to victims of the Asian tsunami disaster to 30 million dollars and would organize a telethon to raise more funds. Given that the scale of the disaster and damage "has surpassed all expectations, royal orders have been issued to increase Saudi Arabia's aid to the victims from 10 million dollars to 30 million dollars," the official SPA news agency reported. SPA reported earlier that King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, whose oil-rich country initially pledged 10 million dollars in emergency funds for the victims,...

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on your definition of "charity." To the United Nations, and The New York Times, charity apparently is defined by how much a government offers to those in need from the money its citizens have coughed up to stay out of jail. To most Americans, charitable giving involves willfully directing cash from their own pockets and giving it to causes they favor - in this case helping the millions who survived the Asian tsunamis. The widely different mentality comes to the fore in the wake of the comments by U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland...

Tsunamis are not the wrath of God Paul Stenhouse, M.S.C., Ph.D. January 04, 2005 THE world is still reeling from the tsunami in the Indian Ocean that caused such loss of life and devastation on Boxing Day. Numbness, disbelief and outrage at our powerlessness, our inability to warn the victims, or to save them, is a common reaction. As is, at times, a desire to blame someone, usually God; or at least to question his wisdom and knowledge in permitting such tragedies to occur, and to seek an explanation for what has happened. Grief at the extent of the devastation...

In the aftermath of the horrific Asian tsunamis of Dec. 26, which have killed more than all 20th-century tsunamis combined, many attempts will be made to place blame or quickly "fix" this problem. A little reflection on the history of past reaction to destructive tsunamis may help. The history of tsunami hazard mitigation tracks well with the history of destructive tsunamis in the U.S. Following the 1946 Alaska tsunami that destroyed the Scotch Cap lighthouse in Unimak, Alaska, and then killed 173 people in Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was established in Hawaii by a predecessor agency to the...

Measuring the Big One These days, an earthquake happens and right away you hear about it on the news, including its magnitude. Instant magnitudes seem like a routine achievement, like reporting the temperature. But that feat is the result of generations of scientific work. Earthquakes, in fact, are very hard to measure. The problem is like coming up with one number to indicate the quality of a baseball pitcher. You can start with the pitcher's win-loss record, but the more you study the problem the more things you want to consider, like earned-run average, defensive range, strikeouts and walks, career...

Magnitude 8.1 - OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA 2004 December 26 00:58:55 UTC Preliminary Earthquake Report West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center/NOAA/NWS A great earthquake occurred at 00:58:55 (UTC) on Sunday, December 26, 2004. The magnitude 8.1 event has been located OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.) Magnitude 8.1 Date-Time Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:55 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 6:58:55 AM = local time at epicenter Location 3.400°N, 95.700°E Depth 40 km (24.9 miles) set by location program Region OFF THE...

It seems almost impossible.Just days after the tidal wave disaster, one of the devestated beaches was returning to normal yesterday.On Sunday, Patong Beach was hit by a wall of water that swept into Phuket, claiming at least 120 lives.Parasols, chairs, and other beach paraphernalia were swept to the top of the tree-lined beach, dragging helpless holidaymakers with them. It was at this beach that six-month-old Melina Heppel, of Perth, disappeared from her father's arms when the huge wave struck.For some tourists yesterday, however, the tragedy was bedoming a memory, albiet a vivid one, as they made the most of the...

That is all I heard. I'll post more if I hear it.

The Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104035110442) in an update on the tsunami casualties today posted a link to a password-protected Thai government site listing all of the known names of the victims from Saturday’s tsunami, along with the password to access it. If you wish to locate the victims for a particular nationality, you can access them by following this link: (http://www.ems.narenthorn.thaigov.net/tsunami/login.php) and typing in “USER” for the username and “PASSWORD” for the password…without the quotation marks, of course. The site offers the option of listing the names by country of origin. This information should be of particular value to anyone with...

PARIS (AFP) - Human activities, notably the building of coastal resorts and the destruction of natural protection, contributed to the enormous loss of life from killer tidal waves that hit the shores of the Indian Ocean after an earthquake, an environmental expert said. Jeff McNeely, chief scientist of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN), who lived for several years in Indonesia and Thailand, two of the countries hit by Sunday's disaster, said it was "nothing new for nature" in a geologically active region. "What has made this a disaster is that people have started to occupy part of the landscape...

The key United States military base in the Indian Ocean has been unaffected by the tsunamis which have devastated parts of Asia, The Washington Post has reported. Diego Garcia, a British territory about 1,500 kilometres south of India, hosts about 3,200 US military personnel and civilian contractors and many US long-range bombers and Navy ships. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Bigelow, a spokesman for US Pacific Command in Hawaii told the newspaper the US base was apparently safe. "There are no reports of any damage there," Lt Col Bigelow said.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Legions of rescuers spread across Asia Monday after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century. The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years. Signs of the carnage...

However, the government said two thirds of the capital was under about four feet (1.2 meters) of water in some areas. About a third of the country’s 330,000 population live in the highly congested capital island. Maldives is a cluster of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator and is vulnerable to any rise in sea levels. The fate of tens of thousands of tourists in the Maldives was not immediately known.

Picture credit: TheCabal"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat"LINK TO THREAD TEN Iran seeks swap of Brits for suicide attackers Report says 40 Revolutionary Guard 'volunteers' held by UK Iran apprehended British military personnel and Navy vessels earlier this week in order to secure release of 40 "suicide operations volunteers" held by the UK, according to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard source. The source told the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the British Army command in Iraq received the demand from the Revolutionary Guard, reported the Middle East Media Research Institute. According to the source,...

New ways of tracking these killer waves may help save lives FOR many inhabitants of the Pacific coast, powerful waves caused by earthquakes or underwater landslides-generally known by their Japanese name, tsunamis-are an ominous threat. When a wave 15 metres (50 feet) high pounded the northern shores of Papua New Guinea in July 1998, the inhabitants were taken by surprise. This tsunami killed more than 2,200 villagers, making it one of the most destructive in recent years. But it was just one of a string of killer waves that have struck the western Pacific over the past few years. Since...

If an asteroid like this one, depicted in an artist's drawing, hit Earth's oceans, it could generate huge waves that would move more slowly than previously thought, but in the end, cause more damage. Asteroid Tsunamis Could be Huge, Slow By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News normalize font   |   increase font June 7 — Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, a new supercomputer model predicts that meteors and asteroids splashing down in the oceans can create waves twice as big, but slower moving, than previous estimates. In other words, if Earth gets walloped...