And yet there are still people out there that insists that global warming is a myth!
Twenty-one tropical storms and hurricanes in the past five months, tying the most ever in a single season. The last letter left in the tempest alphabet was “W” and that has gone to Hurricane Wilma.
The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency responsible for christening these uncontrollable offspring of nature, has never before run out of names. (There is no X, Y or Z, no U or Q _ not enough proper nouns begin with those letters, the agency says.) If there are more before the season ends on Nov. 30, and a potential storm was brewing this weekend south of Puerto Rico, noms de storms revert to the Greek alphabet, beginning with Alpha.
By July, one month into the season, there were already seven named storms _ tropical storms Arlene, Brett and Cindy, hurricanes Dennis and Emily, and tropical storms Franklin and Gert.
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Relations Already Uneasy as Tokyo Accuses Beijing of Tapping Disputed Fields
The Chinese action, Japanese officials charge, has aggravated a potential flash point in East Asia even as diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing languish. The increasingly uneasy relationship between East Asia’s two dominant countries also includes territorial disputes and a heated row over Japan’s perceived lack of repentance for World War II-era aggression.
China is rapidly growing into an economic superpower and is hungry for sources of energy and raw materials. Economic ties have grown tremendously between the two nations in recent years, but they remain in fierce regional competition. Both, for instance, are courting Russia in the hopes of securing an advantageous route for a new trans-Siberian pipeline to the Pacific, and they are locked in a battle for diplomatic and economic influence over a host of Southeast Asian nations.
But Japan has grown so alarmed by China’s activities in the East China Sea that it dispatched two envoys to Washington this month to brief Bush administration and State Department officials on what authorities here described as a “major threat to Japanese sovereignty.”
Can you say PEAK OIL?
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Following Outcry, Trapper’s Work Limited in Montgomery
There’s some debate over whether the coyotes came to Fallsgrove in Rockville, or whether the recently developed residential community was built on the animals’ turf.
There’s no dispute — at least among human beings — over who has to leave.
The coyotes do.
But Fallsgrove residents are clashing over the right way to evict them. A neighborhood homeowners association earlier this year hired Michael Adcock of Adcock Wildlife Management Inc. to get rid of the coyotes. Some residents and animal activists were disturbed when they saw the steel-jawed leg-hold traps he brought to their neighborhood.
“These devices are gruesome, horrible devices,” said Margaret Zanville, president of the Montgomery County Humane Society. “When they snap, they crack the bone. Animals will chew their own paws off to get out of this horrible pain.”
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Court Cites Inequities in Kansas Statute
Yesterday’s ruling was the first time after several attempts that gay rights advocates had managed to translate their Lawrence victory into a favorable ruling on another issue in the lower courts. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court established same-sex marriage, based on the state’s constitution, not Lawrence.
Under the logic of the Kansas ruling, “not only this law but a lot of other laws that treat gay people badly would fall,” said James D. Esseks, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Gay and Lesbian Rights Project.
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