For the third straight day, the center of the United States is under threat of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. (We just got hit again with a very strong storm.) It looks to be another rough night coming up.
(State College, PA) - A slow-moving potent storm will threaten the Plains with severe thunderstorms and potentially destructive and deadly tornadoes for the third-straight day Sunday. Meanwhile, winds howling along the mid-Atlantic and Southeast coast will be the first signs of a storm taking shape offshore.
The Plains are amidst a prolonged severe weather event that has produced deadly and destructive tornadoes. A storm, whose eastward progress has been blocked, has been the culprit for the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that have slammed the country's midsection since Friday afternoon and will continue to do so today.
According to the Midwest Regional News story, the slow-paced storm will once again deliver severe thunderstorms from eastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota to western Texas, with Dallas on the eastern fringe, through tonight. Flooding rain and stronger thunderstorms currently over the region will be followed by more intense thunderstorms starting this afternoon.
I had to go to the store a short while ago and we have some severe erosion damage in various areas around where I live. This hit at a particularly bad time, just after a lot of fields had been plowed but before anything sprouted. There's a lot of bare soil to carry away. It did and more hard rain is hitting right now. The creek that runs through our town is almost out of its banks already. Time to start monitoring the local channels for warnings, I'm afraid.
AFP is reporting a definitive win for Nicolas Sarkozy with around 53% of the vote compared to Royal's 47%. Sarkozy supporters are jubilant, but the capitol is bracing for trouble.
Wild celebrations erupted among Sarkozy supporters in Paris as soon as polls closed and projections said the 52-year-old former interior minister had around 53 percent of the vote against Royal's 47 percent.
There was a high turnout estimated at about 85 percent by polling institutes which highlighted the widespread interest in the election of a new generation of French leaders after President Jacques Chirac's 12 year rule.
Delirious members of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) burst into chants of "Nicolas - President!" and hugged each other in joy at the party's campaign headquarters.
Thousands also gathered on the historic Place de la Concorde in central Paris where Sarkozy was to give a victory speech and veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday was to headline a special concert.
At the Socialist Party headquarters in Paris, supporters gloomily digested a third consecutive presidential defeat after 1995 and 2002.
Royal, who had hoped to become France's first woman president, told disconsolate supporters she hoped "the next president of the republic will accomplish his mandate for the service of all French people."
Thousands of police renforcements were deployed in and around the capital to head off the risk of unrest by youths from high immigrants areas, many of whom regard Sarkozy as a hate-figure since riots of 2005.
Sarkozy will need a lot of hard work to reform France. Best of luck, Mr. President.
Belgian media outlets are reporting that it appears that Nicolas Sarkozy has won the French presidential election run-off with between 53 and 54% of the vote.
The RTBF public broadcasting station and the newspaper Le Soir reported on their websites that unofficial estimates showed Sarkozy beating Socialist Segolene Royal comfortably.
French law bans the publication of any exit polls or projections in France until after the last polling stations close in big cities at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Stand by for trouble. Segolene Royal practically called for riots to follow a Sarkozy win. And the media has carried repeated dire warnings from "youths" in the Paris suburbs promising to carry those riots out. It will be a long night in Paris, I'm afraid. Thousands of riot police have been deployed according to the Times of London.
Thousands of riot police will be deployed in Paris tonight after warnings that victory for Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate in today’s presidential election, could spark violent protests.
Fears of a repeat of the rioting that swept France two years ago intensified as the final opinion polls pointed to an overwhelming victory for Sarkozy. A crowd of up to 40,000 Sarkozy supporters was expected on the Champs Elysées in central Paris to celebrate the result. Police believe that gangs of youths from the suburbs might confront them.
Sarkozy has promised a “fraternal” republic but said last week that he did not regret having described young delinquents as “scum” in 2005 in remarks widely believed to have ignited the rioting.
The interior ministry said that 8,000 riot police were being placed on stand-by in the suburbs — equivalent to the force deployed at the height of the violence, when 10,000 cars and dozens of businesses were burnt in three weeks of mayhem.
A newly discovered cave in Illinois contains some fascinating relics of the ancient past including the remains of the oldest conifer tree ever discovered. Professor Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago and a group of his students discovered the cave while on a field trip. The cave is only about two hours away from Chicago and is very, very large. It will take years to explore the entire cave system.
North America's oldest conifer tree and some ancient scorpion parts are among the fossil treasures found in a newly discovered cave in Illinois.
The new discovery also unearthed fossils of plants that may be new to science and revealed evidence of prehistoric forest fires.
Scientists date the specimens to nearly 315 million years ago, according to initial findings presented last month at the regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Lawrence, Kan.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Roy Plotnick, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who discovered the cave with students on a field trip to a site two hours outside of Chicago. "The limestone that forms the cave is 450 million years old, but that's not the interesting part of the cave. The preservation inside the cave is what's fascinating."
What is of interest to Plotnick and his colleagues are the well-preserved bits of plants and insects that have been cushioned in the cave and protected from the elements.
Illinois is suddenly turning into a regular hotbed of geological discoveries. This announcement follows right on the heels of the news of an entire fossilized rainforest in a coal mine in that state.
Britain's National Health Service is collapsing under it's own weight and has admitted it will have to begin rationing treatment that it can no longer afford to allow to be universal.
British doctors will take the historic step of admitting for the first time that many health treatments will be rationed in the future because the NHS cannot cope with spiralling demand from patients.
In a major report that will embarrass the government, the British Medical Association will say fertility treatment, plastic surgery and operations for varicose veins and minor childhood ailments, such as glue ear, are among a long list of procedures in jeopardy.
James Johnson, the BMA chairman, will warn that patients face a bleak future because they will increasingly be denied treatments. He will urge the NHS to be much more explicit about what it can realistically afford to do and ask political leaders to engage in an open, honest debate about rationing.
The BMA proposes the drawing up of a new patients' charter specifying those health services to which every citizen across England should be entitled, regardless of the local health authority's financial situation. They also want to see a second list of all the treatments which the sick will get only if their primary care trust has the money, and if doctors decide they are clinically worthwhile.
Senior BMA sources say their report recognises the reality that despite record investment in the NHS, 'postcode lotteries' are rife. Primary care trusts, the local NHS organisations that commission and pay for care from hospitals on behalf of patients, are increasingly rejecting requests to pay for procedures or drugs because they are not perceived to be the best use of funds. (Emphasis added)
Still think socialized medicine is a great idea? The tax money goes into the system but services don't come out the other end. There does not appear to be any way to appeal the decision of the bureaucrats when you are denied treatment, either. It will get quite a lot worse for Britons before it gets better. If it ever does.
70 years ago today the 803 foot long Hindenburg burst into flame and crashed when attempting to moor at the Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. 35 passengers and one member of the ground crew were killed in the inferno as the hydrogen gas used for lift in the giant, rigid airship was consumed in a very brief time.
LAKEHURST, N.J. - At 87, Robert Buchanan says he sometimes has trouble remembering what he did 10 minutes ago. But he can recall in vivid detail the day 70 years ago when he watched the luxurious airship Hindenburg erupt into a fireball.
Flames roared across the surface of the mighty German dirigible only 100 or so feet above him, singeing his hair as he ran for his life.
"It was a piff-puff, just like someone would leave the gas on and not get the flame to it," said Buchanan, one of the last living members of the ground crew waiting to help the Hindenburg land.
Seventy years ago Sunday, the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg ignited while easing toward its mooring mast at the U.S. Navy base in Lakehurst. The blaze killed 35 people on board and one person in the ground crew; 62 passengers and crew members survived.
"I ran quite a distance because the heat, the flame, kept shooting out ahead of me," said Buchanan, of nearby Tuckerton. "And I really didn't think I was going to make it, frankly."
The huge airship — more than three times longer than a Boeing 747 — was engulfed in flames and sank to the ground in less than a minute. Photographers and newsreel crews on hand for the landing captured the scene, and a shocked radio station broadcaster recorded the often replayed phrase "Oh, the humanity and all the passengers!"
The Hindenburg disaster spelled the end of the rigid airship. Here's an interesting description (with illustrations) of the luxurious cruising aboard the Hindenburg. And here's the spliced together newsreel footage with the voice of Herbert Morrison, a radio reporter for WLS in Chicago in one of the most instantly recognizable recordings ever made.
Observations | Gaius Sunday, 6 May , 2007 | 
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