2 people killed, around 40 buildings destroyed by Nashville tornado

A tornado struck Nashville, Tennessee in the early hours of Tuesday morning, killing at least two people, destroying around 40 buildings and leaving tens of thousands of people without power.

The Metro Nashville Police reported two fatalities in the East Nashville region. The Nashville fire department said it was responding to reports of approximately 40 structure collapses around Nashville.

The police department in the Mt. Juliet suburb east of Nashville reported multiple homes damaged and people injured.

"There are gas lines that are leaking, power lines that are on the ground, and multiple emergency responders are responding to those who are injured," the Mt. Juliet Police department said.

Tennessee is one of 14 US states that will vote on Tuesday in the contest to choose a Democratic nominee to stand against President Donald Trump in November.

Nashville's Emergency Operations Center announced it had opened an emergency shelter with running water in a farmer's market to help displaced residents.

Schools will be closed on Tuesday due to the tornado damage throughout Nashville, Metro Schools said, adding that election polling sites at schools will be open.

Nashville Electric, the city's public utility, said there were more than 44,000 customers without power early in the morning, with reported damage to four substations, 15 primary distribution lines, and multiple power poles and lines.

John C. Tune Airport (JWN), located 8 miles from downtown Nashville, "sustained significant damage" due to severe weather and several hangars had been destroyed, the airport said on its website.

Several people took to Twitter to say they were without power in the region. Some posted videos of lightning flashing across the sky.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

To 11 million Brazilians, the Earth is flat

SAO PAULO — Sitting by a model of the Earth shaped like a pancake, Brazilian restaurant-owner Ricardo lets out an exaggerated laugh: "'Hahaha!' That's how people react when you tell them the Earth is flat," he says.

Ricardo, who declines to give his full name for just that reason, is a 60-something man whose restaurant in Sao Paulo has become a meeting place for people who, like him, reject the notion that the Earth is a sphere.

"The only things I know for certain are that I'm going to die someday and that the Earth is flat," he says.

It is a curious but remarkably large club: more than 11 million people in Brazil -- 7 percent of the population -- believe the Earth is flat, according to polling firm Datafolha.

And their influence stretches surprisingly far, in a country currently swept up in the post-truth era and the anti-intellectual, climate-change-skeptic worldview embodied by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's most prominent ideologues, the writer and former astrologer Olavo de Carvalho, has said he "cannot refute" Flat-Earth theory.

Yet Brazil's Flat-Earthers are also a secretive, at times paranoid, community, communicating via encrypted messages on WhatsApp, invitation-only Facebook groups and especially on YouTube, where their channels have tens of thousands of followers.

There, they are free to state what they believe, without fear of ridicule: that the Earth is a flat, stationary body.

It is an argument they advance with varying interpretations of physics, optics and the Bible, dismissing all evidence to the contrary as a conspiracy.

'HUMANKIND'S GREATEST LIE' 

Brazilians who believe the Earth is flat are mostly men, often Catholics or evangelical Christians, and with relatively low levels of education, according to Datafolha.

But don't confuse education with knowledge, the Flat-Earthers warn.

"Flat-Earthers are the smartest. Write that!" says Anderson Neves, a 50-year-old entrepreneur, who has come to Ricardo's restaurant armed with a pamphlet denouncing the "hoaxes" of Newton and Copernicus.

"A malignant pseudo-science has corrupted the education system around the world," says another text he is carrying.

It calls the idea of a round Earth "humankind's greatest lie, dictated by the global elite."

Next to him, Ricardo's Flat-Earth model shows the sun and Moon as little balls, equal in size, suspended above a disc-shaped planet.

"Just look at the horizon. Climb a mountain and take pictures. You can see the Earth isn't curved," says Neves, clutching a level to illustrate his point.

The Flat-Earthers are brimming with counter-factual questions: If the Earth is rotating at 1,700 kilometers per hour at the equator, why doesn't the movement make everything fly off? If it's a sphere, why can't we see the curve from an airplane?

They give little credit to photographs from space or scientists' answers about gravity, Foucault's pendulum and two millennia of astronomical observation.

"We've known for certain the Earth isn't flat since Galileo, since the early 17th century. But the ancient Greeks had pieced it together more than 2,000 years ago," says astronomer Roberto Costa of the University of Sao Paulo.

"To scientists, this (Flat-Earth theory) seems more like a topic for psychologists or sociologists to study. The Earth's shape isn't a scientific problem to astronomers."

TILTED EIFFEL TOWER 

One of the most prominent of Brazil's Flat-Earthers is Afonso de Vasconcelos, a geophysicist with a PhD from the University of Sao Paulo.

Vasconcelos is based in the United States, which is also home to a large community of Flat-Earthers. One of them died last week attempting to launch himself more than 1,500 meters into the sky in a homemade rocket.

Vasconcelos operates a YouTube channel called "True Science" (Ciencia de Verdade) where he expounds his ideas to 345,000 followers.

Fellow YouTuber Siddhartha Chaibub, "Professor Flat-Earth" (Professor Terra Plana), has nearly 30,000 followers. Last November, Chaibub helped organize the first-ever convention for Brazilian Flat-Earthers, which drew hundreds of people in Sao Paulo.

One of the favorite targets for Flat-Earthers' conspiracy theories is NASA. They accuse the US space agency of pulling a giant fraud.

"Man never landed on the Moon. That was a studio set," says Ricardo.

As for satellite images showing Earth's curvature from space, he demands: "Where's the tilted Eiffel Tower?"

Agence France-Presse 

Fix climate crisis because Earth is all we’ve got, Nobel Prize winner says

STOCKHOLM - Fix the climate crisis and save the Earth, one of this year's Nobel laureates for physics urged on Saturday, saying the idea of humans escaping our planet to live in other solar systems was farfetched and unrealistic.

Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering planets orbiting distant suns, said he had heard the argument against fighting climate change because 'it doesn't matter because anyway we're going to leave the Earth at some point'.

"I think this is just irresponsible ... because the stars are so far away, I think we should not really have any hope, serious hope, to escape the Earth," Queloz said at a news conference in Stockholm where he is to collect his share of the 9-million-Swedish-crown ($910,000) prize next week.

"So we better spend our time and energy trying to fix it than trying to imagine that we will ... destroy it and leave it," he said.

Some scientists, including late cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, have said threats such as nuclear war and climate change are so serious humans may have to eventually leave the Earth in order to survive as a species.

Briton Stanley Whittingham, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with American John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino of Japan for inventing the lithium-ion battery, said a pragmatic approach was needed to the climate crisis.

"We've got to do things step-wise and have some solutions in mind," he said at the same event. "I think lithium batteries are going to help electrification of transportation, including big trucks, and in the US it's already helping solar and wind take over from coal power plants."

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901. This year's award ceremony and banquet is on Dec. 10.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

LOOK: NASA captures Mercury in transit

This still image from video issued by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows Mercury as it passes between Earth and the sun on Monday. The solar system's smallest, innermost planet resembles a tiny black dot during the transit, which began at 7:35 a.m. EST (1205 UTC). 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

World's biggest firms foresee $1 trillion climate cost hit

LONDON - More than 200 of the world's largest listed companies forecast that climate change could cost them a combined total of almost $1 trillion, with much of the pain due in the next five years, according to a report published on Tuesday.

Even so, the findings by charity CDP suggested many companies still underestimated the dangers as scientists warn that earth's climate system is on course to hit catastrophic tipping points without rapid cuts in carbon emissions.

"Most companies still have a long way to go in terms of properly assessing climate risk," said Nicolette Bartlett, CDP's director of climate change, who authored the report.

Founded in the early 2000s, CDP - formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project - is a respected voice in a growing coalition of pressure groups, fund managers, central bankers and politicians who believe global warming poses a systemic risk to the financial system.

By pushing chief executives to confront risks to their operations, advocates of greater disclosure hope to spur enough investment in cleaner industries to cut carbon emissions in time to meet global climate goals.

In its latest study, CDP analysed survey data from 215 of the largest companies, ranging from Apple and Microsoft to Unilever, UBS, Nestle, China Mobile, Infosys, Sony and BHP.

The companies anticipated a total of $970 billion in extra costs due to factors including hotter temperatures, chaotic weather, and pricing of greenhouse gas emissions. About half of these costs were seen as "likely to virtually certain."

Many companies also saw a huge potential upside if the world can de-carbonize in time to avert the bleakest climate scenarios, which scientists see as an existential risk to industrial civilization.

The companies in the CDP study, which have a combined market capitalization of roughly $17 trillion, saw potential opportunities worth $2.1 trillion, spanning faster-than-expected demand for electric vehicles to investments in renewables.

THE GREAT TRANSITION

Investor concerns over climate risk have risen sharply in parallel with an upsurge in climate activism in many countries as the heat waves, droughts, wildfires and super-storms fueled by climate change have become harder to ignore.

In April, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Francois Villeroy de Galhau, head of the French central bank, warned of the risk of a climate-driven "Minsky moment" – a sudden collapse in asset prices - unless business embraced greater disclosure.

The CDP aligns its questionnaires with the reporting requirements of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, a voluntary initiative launched by the G20 in 2015, which is due to publish a status report on Wednesday.

British-based CDP acknowledges its research cannot provide a perfect snapshot of companies' thinking since a lack of mandatory reporting requirements on climate risk means it has to rely on whatever figures executives are willing to share.

The charity argues, however, that the degree to which companies are willing to engage provides a yardstick to judge the relative transparency of different sectors and generates peer pressure for greater disclosure.

Although no sector was entirely transparent on climate risk, financial services companies tended to be among the most forthcoming respondents, CDP said, accounting for about 70-80 per cent of the estimated costs and opportunities.

Fossil fuel companies who submitted responses to the study reported $140 billion of potential opportunities in the drive towards a low-carbon economy - more than five times the $25 billion value of the risks they identified, CDP said.

With climate action focused on limiting the burning of coal, oil and gas, CDP urged investors to question why fossil players seemed so confident of benefiting from an energy transition that would render their existing business models obsolete.

"The financial sector seems to be identifying more risks than the real economy," said Pedro Faria, a strategic advisor to CDP. "This raises the question: who is managing these risks?"

source: news.abs-cbn.com

NASA blasts off historic probe to 'touch Sun'

NASA on Sunday blasted off a $1.5-billion spacecraft toward the Sun on a historic mission to protect the Earth by unveiling the mysteries of dangerous solar storms.

"Three, two, one, and liftoff!" said a NASA commentator as the Parker Solar Probe lit up the dark night sky aboard a Delta IV-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:31 a.m.

The unmanned spacecraft aims to get closer than any human-made object in history to the center of our solar system.

The probe is designed to plunge into the Sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, during a seven-year mission.

It is protected by an ultra-powerful heat shield that can endure unprecedented levels of heat, and radiation 500 times that experienced on Earth. 

Strange veil

NASA has billed the mission as the first spacecraft to "touch the Sun." 

In reality, it should come within 6.16 million kilometers of the Sun's surface, close enough to study the curious phenomenon of the solar wind and the Sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, which is 300 times hotter than its surface.

The car-sized probe is designed to give scientists a better understanding of solar wind and geomagnetic storms that risk wreaking chaos on Earth by knocking out the power grid.

These solar outbursts are poorly understood, but pack the potential to wipe out power to millions of people.

A worst-case scenario could cost up to $2 trillion in the first year alone and take a decade to fully recover from, experts have warned.

"The Parker Solar Probe will help us do a much better job of predicting when a disturbance in the solar wind could hit Earth," said Justin Kasper, a project scientist and professor at the University of Michigan.

Knowing more about the solar wind and space storms will also help protect future deep space explorers as they journey toward the Moon or Mars.

Heat shield 

The probe is guarded by an ultra-powerful heat shield that is just 4.5 inches thick, enabling the spacecraft to survive its close shave with the fiery star.

Even in a region where temperatures can reach more than a million degrees Fahrenheit, the sunlight is expected to heat the shield to just around 1,371 degrees Celsius.

If all works as planned, the inside of the spacecraft should stay at just 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The goal for the Parker Solar Probe is to make 24 passes through the corona during its seven-year mission.

"The sun is full of mysteries," said Nicky Fox, project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

"We are ready. We have the perfect payload. We know the questions we want to answer."

91-year-old namesake

The spacecraft is the only NASA probe in history to be named after a living person -- in this case, 91-year-old solar physicist Eugene Parker, who first described the solar wind in 1958.

Parker said last week that he was "impressed" by the Parker Solar Probe, calling it "a very complex machine."

NASA chief of the science mission directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, said Saturday that Parker is an "incredible hero of our scientific community," and called the probe one of NASA most "strategically important" missions.

Scientists have wanted to build a spacecraft like this for more than 60 years, but only in recent years did the heat shield technology advance enough to be capable of protecting sensitive instruments.

Tools on board will measure high-energy particles associated with flares and coronal mass ejections, as well as the changing magnetic field around the Sun. 

A white light imager will take images of the atmosphere right in front of the Sun.

When it nears the Sun, the probe will travel rapidly enough to go from New York to Tokyo in one minute -- some 430,000 miles per hour, making it the fastest human-made object.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Heads up: 'Supermoon' to appear on Monday

MANILA -- On Monday, Filipinos can get a glimpse of the so-called "supermoon" as it reaches its closest point during its orbit around the Earth in 68 years.

According to state weather bureau PAGASA, the moon will reach the perigee or its closest point to Earth at 7:21 p.m., almost two hours and 31 minutes before going full moon at 9:52 p.m.

This will be the closest perigee since January 26, 1948. The moon won’t be seen this close to Earth again until November 26, 2034.

"This year’s supermoon is one of the closest and biggest in 68 years and it won’t happen again until 2034," PAGASA said in its advisory.

PAGASA explained that the "supermoon" is a modern astrological term coined by Richard Nole.

It is defined as “a new or full moon that occurs when the moon is within 90% of its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit" and is called a Perigee Full Moon, or one that is closer to Earth than average, in astronomy.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a supermoon can be as much as 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than an apogee full moon.

However, a 30 percent difference in brightness can easily be masked by clouds or the competing glare of urban lights.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

LOOK: Supermoon sightings all over the world

The total "supermoon" lunar eclipse treated sky-watchers around the world when the shadow of Earth cast a reddish glow on the moon, the result of rare combination of an eclipse with the closest full moon of the year.

The astronomical event occurs when the moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, making it appear much larger and brighter than usual. (Reuters)

Mobile users can view the desktop version of the slideshow here.

The Moon, appears next to a statue on the Alexander III bridge in Paris. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

It's showtime for Perseid meteors

Dark skies due to a nearly invisible moon will make this year's Perseid meteor shower -- peaking Wednesday and Thursday -- an especially star-studded event, astronomers say.

So grab a folding chair, prepare a list of wishes, and get as far from bright city lights and clouds as you can to watch the natural firework display.

You do not even need a telescope or special, geeky glasses.

At its peak, up to 100 shooting stars per hour will streak across the sky -- more than one a minute.

Viewing is expected to be even easier this year because the moon's glow won't interfere with meteor-watching, as it will be approaching its darkest or "new" phase, experts say.

The light show will be visible around the globe, but especially bright in northern latitudes above the United States, Europe and East Asia.

What we often call "falling stars" are actually tiny bits of space rock that smash into the atmosphere at about 60 kilometres (37 miles) per second, burning up in flashes of light.

Occasionally, longer and brighter streaks are seen, from pea- or marble-sized comet remnants.

The flaming nuggets visible over the next couple of days are from the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, which swings around the solar system every 130 years or so.

"All comets probably have a bad case of dandruff," said Carolin Crawford, the public astronomer at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy.

"But this one is one where the Earth's orbit takes it smack through the centre of the trail of debris that it leaves behind."

Swift-Tuttle last crossed paths with Earth's orbit in 1992.

The visual intensity of the meteor shower is caused not only by the number of space pebbles streaking into the atmosphere but also by the angle at which we approach them.

"It's like driving through a snow storm," said Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History.

"A meteor shower is a collision between the Earth" -- whipping through Space -- "and this debris tail," she explained.

"We are not hitting one little spot, but turning through it. As in a snow storm, when you are in the front of a car it looks way worse than when you are at the back."

Amateur interest around the globe is high, but astronomy shops in London were not exactly buzzing with talk of the meteor shower Wednesday.

"It's not something we spend a great amount of time chatting to people about," said someone from The Widescreen Centre, an astronomy supplies store.

"Meteor showers are best seen with the unaided eye and we can't sell people equipment to do that."

The showers are named after the constellation of Perseus, the hero from Greek mythology who beheaded the snake-headed Medusa to save the princess Andromeda.

"It's going to be a spectacular show this year," astronomer Morgan Hollis of the Royal Astronomical Society told AFP previously. "You'll be able to a see a lot more than normal."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Russia successfully launches military satellite

Russia successfully launched a military satellite on Friday, following a recent string of failures for the country's space programme.

The military satellite sent into space from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia at 1524 GMT was put into orbit as planned, state news agency TASS reported, quoting a defence ministry spokesman.

Russia's space sector has seen a series of misfires lately including the Progress spacecraft, which failed shortly after launch on April 28 and fell back to Earth.

In May a Proton rocket did not manage to put into orbit a Mexican communications satellite.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made revitalising the space sector a priority, a project that may include transforming the country's space agency into a public company.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

LOOK: Sky turns pink in Cagayan de Oro

CAGAYAN DE ORO - The sky literally turned pink during sunset in Cagayan de Oro on Tuesday.

The unusual pink sky caught the attention of some residents in Barangay Bulua.

Pictures posted on Facebook showed the sky changing its color from orange to pink.

PAGASA weather specialist June Frivaldo said the changing of the color of the sky is the effect of the scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Cyclone-hit Vanuatu seeks world's help

Vanuatu's president pleaded with the world Monday to help the cyclone-ravaged Pacific nation rebuild its "completely destroyed" infrastructure as aid agencies warned conditions were among the most challenging they have faced with fears of disease rife.

An emotional President Baldwin Lonsdale said the need was "immediate" after Severe Tropical Cyclone Pam tore through the country on Friday night packing wind gusts of up to 320 kilometres (200 miles) an hour, leaving massive destruction.

In the capital Port Vila access to water was partially restored and stores began reopening, but entire neighbourhoods remained without power as aid workers streamed in to take the measure of what many have said might be one of the region's worst weather disasters.

"The humanitarian need is immediate, we need it right now," Lonsdale told AFP before flying home from a disaster conference in Japan, adding that the poverty-stricken island chain also desperately required longer-term financial support.

"After all the development we have done for the last couple of years and this big cyclone came and just destroyed... all the infrastructure the government has... built. Completely destroyed.

"We need international funding to (re)build all the infrastructure."

Many world leaders have pledged support. Military planes from Australia, New Zealand and France were arriving loaded with food, shelter, medicine and generators, along with disaster relief teams.

The official death toll in the battered capital Port Vila, where aid workers said up to 90 percent of homes have been damaged, stands at six with more than 30 injured, although there are fears this is likely a fraction of the fatalities caused by the storm.

'Quite frightening'

The nation's Prime Minister Joe Natuman was at home when the tempest hit.

"I tell you it was quite frightening," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"It sounded like a big noise, you know. Throughout the night, big noise, thunder, lightning. When you looked out you couldn't see anything."

While the aid missions continued landing, workers on the ground said there was no way to distribute desperately needed supplies across the archipelago's 80 islands, warning it would take days to reach remote villages flattened by the monster storm.

Oxfam country director in Port Vila Colin Collett van Rooyen said a lack of clean water, temporary toilets, water purification tablets and hygiene kits needed to be addressed rapidly.

"Friday night was the first emergency with the arrival of Cyclone Pam, disease will be the second emergency without clean water, sanitation and hygiene provision," he said.

"There are more than 100,000 people likely homeless, every school destroyed, full evacuation centres, damage to health facilities and the morgue."

Trees, metal roof sheeting and all manner of debris littered Port Vila's roads, while at the beach, several boats were thrown on their side, an AFP reporter said.

The streets of the capital were virtually deserted as night fell, with authorities enforcing a 6:00 pm curfew to prevent looting.

Charlotte Gillan, an Australian paramedic who lives in the village of Tango on the outskirts of Port Vila, said the front part of her house had collapsed.

"I fought tears seeing that devastation," she said, adding that disease was now her main concern.

'All that's gone'

"With all the rain and rubbish around, there's going to be malaria and dengue, as well as diarrhoea and vomiting with water contamination. People here are reliant on their gardens for food. But all that's gone."

Save the Children's Vanuatu director Tom Skirrow told AFP the logistical challenges were even worse than for Super Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in November 2013, leaving more than 7,350 people dead or missing.

"I was present for the Haiyan response and I would 100 percent tell you that this is a much more difficult logistical problem," he said.

"The numbers are smaller but the percentage of the population that's been affected is much bigger."

Skirrow said flights over remote islands in the archipelago, which spans more than 12,000 square kilometres (4,700 square miles), had confirmed widespread destruction elsewhere in the nation of 270,000.

Aid workers said it appeared the southern island of Tanna in particular suffered widespread damage.

Pacific nations regard themselves as at the frontline of climate change, given many are low-lying islands dangerously exposed to rising sea levels, and Lonsdale said changing weather patterns were partly to blame for the destruction.

Despite the scale of the disaster, with communications still down to most of the islands, CARE Australia official Tom Perry said he detected a change of mood in Port Vila Monday.

"Yesterday it was sombre but today was more a sense of 'Let's get on with it'," he said.

"People were in the streets starting to clear debris."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Homes destroyed as twin cyclones slam into northern Australia

SYDNEY - A powerful cyclone slammed into northeast Australia on Friday, destroying homes, upending trees, cutting power lines and causing flash floods, while a second storm severed communications to a northern island where heavy damage was expected.

Tens of thousands took what shelter they could as Cyclone Marcia caught Queensland state almost unawares, gathering strength in just a few hours before making landfall midmorning as a category 5 system - the highest rating.

Emergency services scrambled to evacuate thousands of homes in the direct path of Marcia before pulling out and warning anyone who had not left to barricade themselves inside to avoid wind gusts peaking at 285 kph (177 mph).

Rail lines to coastal ports, an essential part of Queensland's A$280 billion ($218 billion) commodities export-driven economy, were brought to a standstill.

"Stay indoors, take the safest room in the home and let the storm pass," Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Assistant Commissioner John Watson told media after the storm passed over the coastal city of Rockhampton, home to 75,000 people, and headed south towards Australia's third-largest city, Brisbane.

There were no reports of deaths or injuries and meteorologists said the worst of the winds had eased by evening and downgraded the cyclone to a category 2. But authorities warned heavy rains and flooding were likely to continue for several days and extend inland.

Some 48,000 homes were left without power, Watson added, broken power lines and flooding leaving some areas too dangerous for energy companies to begin repairs.

SUGAR, COAL AT RISK

More than 10 percent of Australia's sugar crop was at risk from Marcia, an industry body warned. The world's No. 3 exporter of raw sugar is set to produce 4.6 million tons of the commodity in 2015.

BHP Billiton suspended rail lines hauling coal from its inland collieries to the massive Hay Point shipping terminal until further notice.

Marcia's forecast trajectory indicated the impact on coal mining was expected to be less severe than in 2011, when Queensland missed its annual coal export target by 40 million tons after storms dumped unprecedented amounts of rain into pits.

The latest data supplied by the Bureau of Meteorology showed Marcia moving inland rather than directly impacting the Gladstone industrial hub, where Rio Tinto operates Australia's largest aluminum smelter.

Emergency service officials in the neighboring Northern Territory were beginning to assess the damage caused by Cyclone Lam that made landfall in the remote region east of Darwin.

The category 4 storm hit near the settlement of Ramingining, where residents were beginning to emerge to inspect the damage. Communications had been cut with tiny Elcho Island, which was believed to have experienced widespread damage, Northern Territory police said.

By evening, Lam had been downgraded to a tropical low but continued to dump heavy rain across the north as it moved southwest.

It was also looming as a gloomy weekend for sports fans, with torrential rains from Marcia likely to force a halt to Australia's second World Cup cricket match against Bangladesh scheduled to be played in Brisbane on Saturday.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Giant asteroid set to buzz Earth, poses no threat

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - An asteroid measuring about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) in diameter will make a relatively close, but harmless pass by Earth Monday night, NASA said.

The asteroid will pass about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Earth, roughly three times farther away than the moon.

Amateur and professional astronomers are preparing to watch the flyby, which will be most visible between 8 p.m. EST Monday and 1 a.m. EST Tuesday (0100 to 0600 GMT Tuesday) from the Americas, Europe and Africa.

A small telescope or binoculars will be needed to see the asteroid, which is known as 2004 BL86.

"While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it's a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more," astronomer Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said in a statement.

The asteroid, which orbits the sun every 1.84 years, was discovered 11 years ago by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, telescope in New Mexico.

Scientists plan to map the asteroid's surface with radar during the flyby in hopes of learning more about its size, shape, rate of rotation and other features.

"At present, we know almost nothing about this asteroid, so there are bound to be surprises," astronomer Lance Benner with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SpaceWeather.com.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 will be the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies by in 2027, NASA said.

NASA currently tracks more than 11,000 asteroids in orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. The U.S. space agency says it has found more than 95 percent of the largest asteroids, those with diameters 0.65 miles or larger, with orbits that take them relatively close to Earth.

An object of that size hit the planet about 65 million years ago in what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, triggering a global climate change that is believed to be responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs and many other forms of life on Earth.

Two years ago, a relatively a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,500 people injured by flying glass and debris. That same day, an unrelated asteroid passed just 17,200 miles from Earth, closer than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet.

Websites planning live coverage of Monday night's flyby include NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (sservi.nasa.gov), Slooh.com and The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Cyclone could cancel Pope's Leyte visit, says exec

MANILA – A member of the Papal Visit Executive Committee said bad weather may force the cancellation of Pope Francis' visit to Leyte.

Ambassador Marciano Paynor, member of the Papal Visit Executive Committee, said the approaching cyclone east of the Visayas-Mindanao region has cast uncertainty on the pope's January 17 visit to Yolanda-ravaged Tacloban.

''Talagang hindi natin masasabi, pero siyempre ang pinaka (concern) nga is iyung weather ho,'' Paynor told dzMM.

''Kung masyadong malakas ang ulan o hangin, hindi pwedeng mag-landing ang eroplano sa Tacloban. Iyun ang pwedeng makaapekto. Pero pinag-darasal natin na huwag mangyari iyon."

The pope's visit to the typhoon-stricken region is considered the most important part of his visit to the Philippines, which carries the theme ''Mercy and Compassion''.

The pope is scheduled to celebrate Mass at the Tacloban airport, considered the ground zero for Yolanda, and have lunch with 30 survivors of the super typhoon and the destructive Bohol earthquake.

Cyclone
State weather bureau PAGASA said a tropical depression was spotted 1,610 kilometers east of Mindanao as of 4 a.m.

The tropical depression was packing maximum sustained winds of 55 kilometers per hour and was moving west northwest at 19 kph.

PAGASA weather forecaster Jori Loiz told dzMM that the tropical depression will enter the Philippine area of responsibility between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, at which point it will be locally named ''Amang''.

Loiz said the cyclone might re-curve due to the high pressure area. He, however, said even if the cyclone re-curves, it's trough or outer cloudbands will still bring rains over Visayas and Mindanao.

PAGASA said by Friday (January 16), Tacloban City will experience light rains as the tropical cyclone moves closer to the country.

By Saturday (January 17), light to moderate rains and moderate to strong winds will prevail over Tacloban and thunderstorms are likely to occur.

People surge
Meanwhile, Pasig Bishop Mylo Vergara, head of the media committee for the papal visit to the Philippines, said people who want to bring children to any of the papal events in the Philippines, especially in the pope's mass in Luneta, should not be discouraged from doing so.

''Everyone should go. I think even some elderlies are excited to go there. There will be persons with disbailities who would be attending the mass, so why not?" he told ANC's Headstart.

Citing the annual Feast of the Black Nazarene, Vergara noted the Philippines is no stranger to events that see a large number of people converging in one place.

''Ang poong nazareno happens every year. It is something that we look forward to. It is always asked of me, are you afraid of the people surge? Eh people surge na yung poong nazareno hindi ba? And things fall into place afterwards. We do the best in security, in management of the crowd,'' he said.

Nearly 40,000 soldiers and police are being deployed to protect the pontiff during his five-day trip to the Philippines, a majority Catholic nation where attempts have been made to kill visiting popes twice before.

"For this year, this will be the greatest security nightmare that we can have," Philippine military chief General Gregorio Catapang said as he readied his troops for the pontiff's arrival.

Authorities have stated the huge crowds of devout Catholics are their main worry, with up to six million people expected for a mass in Manila on Sunday. – with Agence France-Presse

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Earthlings to send 90,000 hellos to Mars

Radio telescopes on Earth will beam 90,000 messages to Mars on Friday to commemorate the launch 50 years ago of the first robotic probe to visit the planet.

A U.S. space funding company called Uwingu organized the extraterrestrial shout-out to mark the 50th anniversary of NASA's Mariner 4 mission and to raise funds for its other projects.

Uwingu's "Beam Me To Mars" initiative invited interested participants to send digital radio-wave transmissions of their names, messages and pictures to Mars for fees ranging from $5 to $99.

The effort attracted several celebrities including actor and comedian Seth Green and actor George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the television series "Star Trek."

The transmission is scheduled to begin just after 3 p.m. EST/2000 GMT on Friday. Traveling at the speed of light, the messages will take 15 minutes to reach Mars. The entire transmission will be repeated twice.

While there is no one on Mars to answer the call, project organizers say that is beside the point.

Copies of the messages will be delivered to Congress, to NASA headquarters in Washington, and the United Nations in New York as a show of support for space exploration.

"Though no one is on Mars yet to receive the messages, here on Earth people will hear them loud and clear," Uwingu wrote on the project website.

Uwingu, pronounced "oo-wing-goo" which means "sky" in Swahili, is a privately owned company that raises money to fund space research and educational outreach projects.

Since Mariner 4's successful flyby of Mars, returning the first pictures of the planet's surface, more than 20 other spacecraft have successfully visited, orbited or landed on the planet's surface.

NASA currently has three orbiters and two rovers working on Mars, and the European Space Agency and India each have one Mars orbiter.

The long-term goal of the U.S. space program is to land astronauts on the Red Planet.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Magnitude 6.8 quake hits central Japan; no tsunami warning

TOKYO - An earthquake with preliminary magnitude of 6.8 jolted central Japan on Saturday evening, temporarily trapping 21 people when their homes collapsed and leaving 13 people injured, police and public broadcaster NHK said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said no tsunami warning was issued after the quake, which was felt in the capital Tokyo 180 km (110 miles) away.

A National Police Agency official said the quake destroyed five houses in Hakuba village, host to ski jumping and other events during the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games, but that the 21 villagers trapped were successfully rescued.

At least two of them were injured, although the degree of their injuries was not immediately clear, he said.

NHK reported 13 people were injured in the quake, including five who were seriously hurt.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters an advanced party of Japan's military had been sent to the area, and others were on standby.

High-speed trains were halted but later resumed service, Kyodo news agency reported.

There were no signs of irregularities at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, a spokesman for the utility said. The plant, where all seven reactors are currently off-line, is the world's largest power station.

NHK quoted an official in the village of Ogawa near the epicentre as saying there was a long tremor and documents fell off shelves.

"On the second floor of our house, the tremor was too strong to stand," said Sakiko Hagiwara, an NHK employee in the area.

"Pictures fell off the wall," she said, adding there were no cracks in the walls.

NHK also said there was a report of a landslide blocking roads near Hakuba.

Japan, situated on the "Ring of Fire" arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck under the ocean off the coast of the northern city of Sendai. The quake triggered a massive tsunami that devastated a wide swathe of the Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000. It also devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

(Additional reporting by Olivier Fabre, Osamu Tsukimori, Kiyoshi Takenaka; Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Andrew Roche and David Evans)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

6.2 quake hits central Japan, flattens houses

TOKYO -- A strong 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Japan late Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, flattening houses, as media reported 15 people were briefly trapped under collapsed buildings.

The quake struck at 10:08 pm local time (1308 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles) at the epicentre, in the north of Nagano Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, according to USGS.

Television footage showed flattened wooden houses, a mudslide blocking a road and books fallen off shelves.

The Japan Meteorological Agency measured the quake at magnitude 6.8.

"It's quite a strong earthquake for an inland one," an official at the Japanese agency told a midnight press conference.

"We are worried about the extent of damage to houses and buildings," he said, adding that residents should also be on alert for possible landslides as mountainous areas were the hardest hit.

The quake toppled at least three houses in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture, local police said, injuring one resident. No further details were immediately confirmed.

Public broadcaster NHK said 15 residents were temporarily trapped under the houses but all of them, including the injured person and a two-year-old toddler, were rescued.

Electricity was cut off at around 1,600 households.

Nagano police said several people sustained minor injuries in the quake.

But police and municipal officials said they were still scrambling to collect information as they were operating in the dark.

Yoshihide Suga, the top spokesman for the central government, told reporters that Tokyo was doing its best to get hold of the overall damage.

"We'd like to ask people in the affected areas to help each other and act calmly," Suga said in a televised remark.

More than 20 aftershocks hit Nagano following the first big strike Saturday.

The meteorological agency warned strong aftershocks could still occur in the coming week.

"It is fully possible that houses already damaged by the main quake could be dealt further blow by aftershocks," the official at the press conference said.

There was no damage to any of the seven nuclear reactors at the sprawling Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in neighbouring Niigata prefecture as they have been off-line since 2011.

Other nuclear plants were also intact.

Japan is hit by around a fifth of the world's powerful quakes every year and sits at the conjunction of several tectonic plates.

A strong tremor revives memories of the 9.0 earthquake in March 2011, which triggered a tsunami that sparked the Fukushima atomic disaster and left 18,000 people dead or missing.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Tsunami alert sparks panic in Indonesia

KOTA TERNATE, Indonesia - A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake rocked the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia Saturday, sparking a tsunami warning and causing panicked people to flee their homes.

Small waves generated by the undersea quake were detected in several parts of the sprawling archipelago, local authorities said, although there were no reports of casualties or major damage and the tsunami warning was lifted after a short while.

Nevertheless, the prospect of a major tsunami set nerves on edge in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, almost a decade after quake-triggered destructive waves devastated western Aceh province.

The tsunami of December 26, 2004, left more than 170,000 people dead in Aceh, on Sumatra island, and tens of thousands more in countries with coasts on the Indian Ocean.

Saturday's tremor struck northwest of the town of Kota Ternate, at 0231 GMT, the US Geological Survey said. It was followed by a series of aftershocks that measured between magnitude 4.3 and 5.8, the USGS said.

"Tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 300 kilometers," said the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The center also warned of small tsunami waves in the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan and islands in the South Pacific.

On the tiny Sangihe Islands close to the epicentre in Indonesia, people ran out of their homes when the quake hit, Toni Supit, head of the islands' Sitaro district, told AFP.

"People in coastal areas felt the strong quake, which lasted for quite some time, and they immediately went to the sea to see if the water was receding abnormally, which is a sign of an incoming tsunami," he said.

- Ring of fire -

Tsunami waves 90 centimetres high were detected at Jailolo on Halmahera island, in the Maluku Islands, the meteorological agency said. Tiny waves were also detected in Tobelo on Halmahera, and in Manado, on nearby Sulawesi island.

An agency official on Sulawesi said early reports indicated that cracks had appeared in the walls of some houses after the quake, although full damage reports had yet to be come in.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said earlier that waves up to one metre high could hit parts of Indonesia, while waves below 30 centimetres were forecast for the coasts of the Philippines.

Indonesia's meteorological agency warned people in the northern Maluku Islands and in the north of Sulawesi in particular to stay away from the coast.

Julius Galgiano, a Philippine government seismologist, said the Philippines had also issued a tsunami warning.

"We are telling (local communities) to have a tsunami watch in areas along the coast," he said, but added that no evacuation orders had been issued and the tsunami waves were not expected to be high.

Around two hours after the quake, the warning centre said there was no longer a tsunami threat.

"The tsunami threat from this earthquake has now mostly passed. Any remaining threat should be evaluated by local authorities in impacted areas," it said.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity, and has been hit by numerous deadly earthquakes over the years.

A 6.1-magnitude quake that hit inland in Aceh in July last year left at least 30 people dead and thousands homeless. It caused a mosque to collapse in one village, killing six children as they took part in a Koran reading session.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

China completes first mission to moon and back

BEIJING - China completed its first return mission to the moon early Saturday with the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned probe, state media reported, in the latest step forward for Beijing's ambitious space programme.

The probe landed safely in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

Xinhua said the probe took "some incredible pictures" of the Earth and the moon.

Prior to re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (25,000 miles per hour), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), the news agency reported.

To slow it down, scientists let the craft "bounce" off Earth's atmosphere before re-entering again and landing.

The probe's mission was to travel to the moon, fly around it and head back to Earth, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said in a statement at its launch eight days ago.

The module would have been 413,000 kilometres from Earth at its furthest point on the mission, SASTIND said at the time.

The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Chang'e-5, China's fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather samples from the moon's surface and will be launched around 2017, SASTIND previously said.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise.

The military-run space project, which has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon, is also seen as evidence of the ruling Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

China currently has a rover on the surface of the moon.

The craft, called the Jade Rabbit and launched as part of the Chang'e-3 lunar mission late last year, has been declared a success by Chinese authorities, although it has been beset by mechanical troubles.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com