Today's News:

Irene churns up coast, weaker but still ferocious

TheVirginian-Pilot, Bill Tiernan - One of two people rescued from a sailboat, right, uses a line to make their way onto the beach on Willoughby Spit in Norfolk Saturday morning, Aug. 27, 2011.

NAGS HEAD, N.C. (AP) — Weaker but still menacing, Hurricane Irene knocked out power and piers in North Carolina, clobbered Virginia with wind and churned up the coast Saturday to confront cities more accustomed to snowstorms than tropical storms. New York City emptied its streets and subways and waited with an eerie quiet.

With most of its transportation machinery shut down, the Eastern Seaboard spent the day nervously watching the storm's march across a swath of the nation inhabited by 65 million people. The hurricane had an enormous wingspan — 500 miles, its outer reaches stretching from the Carolinas to Cape Cod — and packed wind gusts of 115 mph.

Almost a million homes and businesses were without power. While it was too early to assess the full threat, Irene was blamed for five deaths.

The hurricane stirred up 7-foot waves, and forecasters warned of storm-surge danger on the coasts of Virginia and Delaware, along the Jersey Shore and in New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. In the Northeast, drenched by rain this summer, the ground is already saturated, raising the risk of flooding.

Irene made its official landfall just after first light near Cape Lookout, N.C., at the southern end of the Outer Banks, the ribbon of land that bows out into the Atlantic Ocean. Shorefront hotels and houses were lashed with waves. Two piers were destroyed, and at least one hospital was forced to run on generator power.

"Things are banging against the house," Leon Reasor said as he rode out the storm in the town of Buxton. "I hope it doesn't get worse, but I know it will. I just hate hurricanes."

By evening, the storm had weakened to sustained winds of 80 mph, down from 100 mph on Friday. That made it a Category 1, the least threatening on a 1-to-5 scale, and barely stronger than a tropical storm. Its center was positioned almost exactly where North Carolina meets Virginia at the Atlantic, and it was picking up speed, moving at 16 mph — up from 13 mph — as it re-emerged over the Atlantic. A hurricane warning had been lifted south of Surf City, N.C.

After the Outer Banks, the storm strafed Virginia with rain and strong wind. It covered the Hampton Roads region, which is thick with inlets and rivers and floods easily, and chugged north toward Chesapeake Bay. Shaped like a massive inverted comma, the storm had a thick northern flank that covered all of Delaware, almost all of Maryland and the eastern half of Virginia.

The deaths included two children, an 11-year-old boy in Virginia killed when a tree crashed through his roof and a North Carolina child who died in a crash at an intersection where traffic lights were out.

In addition, a North Carolina man was killed by a flying tree limb, a passenger died when a tree fell on in a car in Virginia, and a surfer in Florida was killed in heavy waves.

It was the first hurricane to make landfall in the continental United States since 2008, and came almost six years to the day after Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Experts guessed that no other hurricane in American history had threatened as many people.

At least 2.3 million were under orders to move to somewhere safer, although it was unclear how many obeyed or, in some cases, how they could.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 6,500 troops from all branches of the military to get ready to pitch in on relief work, and President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's command center in Washington and offered moral support.

"It's going to be a long 72 hours," he said, "and obviously a lot of families are going to be affected."

In New York, authorities began the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt. The subway began shutting down at noon, the first time the system was closed because of a natural disaster. It was expected to take as long as eight hours for all the trains to complete their runs and be taken out of service.

On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates near the East River because of fear of flooding. Tarps were placed over other grates. Construction stopped throughout the city, and workers at the site of the World Trade Center dismantled a crane and secured equipment.

While there were plenty of cabs on the street, the city was far quieter than on an average Saturday. In some of the busiest parts of Manhattan, it was possible to cross a major avenue without looking, and the waters of New York Harbor, which might normally be churning from boat traffic, were quiet before the storm.

The biggest utility, Consolidated Edison, considered cutting off power to 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan because it would make the eventual repairs easier. Mayor Michael Bloomberg also warned New Yorkers that elevators in public housing would be shut down, and elevators in some high-rises would quit working so people don't get trapped if the power goes out.

"The time to leave is right now," Bloomberg said at an outdoor news conference at Coney Island, his shirt soaked from rain.

A day earlier, the city ordered evacuations for low-lying areas, including Battery Park City at the southern edge of Manhattan, Coney Island with its famous amusement park and the beachfront Rockaways in Queens.

The five main New York-area airports — La Guardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark, plus two smaller ones — waved in their last arriving flights around noon. The Giants and Jets postponed their preseason NFL game, the Mets postponed two baseball games, and Broadway theaters were dark.

New York has seen only a handful of hurricanes in the past 200 years. The Northeast is much more used to snowstorms — including the blizzard last December, when Bloomberg was criticized for a slow response.

For all the concern, there were early signs that the storm might not be as bad as feared. Some forecasts had it making landfall as a Category 3 storm and perhaps reaching New York as a Category 2.

"Isabel got 10 inches from coming in the house, and this one ain't no Isabel," said Chuck Owen of Poquoson, Va., who has never abandoned his house to heed an evacuation order. He was referring to Hurricane Isabel, which chugged through in 2003.

Still, Owen put his pickup truck on a small pyramid of cinder blocks to protect it from the storm tide, which had already begun surging through the saltwater marshes that stand between Poquoson and Chesapeake Bay.

Airlines said 9,000 flights were canceled, including 3,000 on Saturday. Airlines declined to say how many passengers would be affected, but it could easily be millions because so many flights make connections on the East Coast. There were more than 10,000 cancellations during the blizzard last winter.

American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said it was not clear when flights would resume out of New York.

"The one thing about a hurricane is that you can prepare for it and you just have to adapt your plan based on how the storm travels," she said. "It's basically an educated guessing game."

Greyhound suspended bus service between Richmond, Va., and Boston. Amtrak canceled trains in the Northeast for Sunday.

The power losses covered 900,000 homes and businesses and were heavily concentrated in Virginia and North Carolina. Dominion Resources reported almost 600,000 customers without power and Progress Energy 260,000, with much of the outages in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, N.C.

Irene roared across the Caribbean earlier this week, offering a devastating preview for the United States: power outages, dangerous floods and high winds that caused millions of dollars in damage. •

##############################################

Mexico deploys 1,500 troops after 'terrorist' casino attack

Monterrey, Mexico (CNN) -- Hundreds of troops headed to northern Mexico Saturday as authorities continued investigations into the torching of a casino that left at least 52 people dead.

Mexico's president, who described the attack as an act of terrorism, ordered the deployment of 1,500 troops to the city of Monterrey over the next three days, the country's defense department said in a statement.

State officials released composite sketches of three suspects. And Mexico's Attorney General's Office said it was offering a 30-million peso ($2.4 million) reward for information leading to the capture of men they suspect were behind Thursday afternoon's attack in the affluent city.

The ambush left a charred shell where a high-end casino once stood. Photos of the scene at the Casino Royale showed singed slot machines. A video released by Mexican authorities showed armed men bursting into the casino carrying what appeared to be gallons of gasoline. Seconds later, dozens of people fled as smoke and fire engulfed the building.

On Saturday, 300 soldiers from the Mexican Army and Air Force boarded planes in the nation's capital, bound for Monterrey as part of Calderon's plan to help local authorities fight drug trafficking and organized crime, Mexico's defense department said.

Investigators were still trying to identify seven of the 52 people killed in Thursday's attack, Mexico's state-run Notimex news agency reported Saturday.

The staggering number of victims drew national attention in a country where headlines regularly describe brutal drug-related violence.

"It is evident that we are not facing common criminals," Calderon said Friday. "We are facing true terrorists that have crossed all the limits, not only of the law, but also of common sense and respect for life."

Analysts said the attack could be connected with rival gangs seeking revenge, or the casino's owners could have been targeted for not paying extortion fines. But no matter what sparked the attack, analysts said it had a clear goal: Creating widespread fear.

"Without a doubt, what this act and others like it are trying to do is provoke terror in the population," said Jose Luis Pineyro, a professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Azcapotzalco, Mexico.

"Of all the similar events, this has the most impact, not only because of the number of victims, but because it seems like they were trying to have the largest number of victims possible," he added.

Criminal organizations are using terrorism to challenge the government's security strategy and pressure people who have been protesting against violence, according to Jorge Luis Sierra, an expert in armed groups.

"There are various indications that drug trafficking and organized crime are laying the groundwork to put pressure on society and on the state, and given the larger military and police presence, they are resorting to terrorism," Sierra said.

The attack and others like it show failures in Mexico's military intelligence, Sierra said.

"As long as they haven't resolved problems of this nature in the security policy, the state, the government and society are going to be living in a very vulnerable situation," he said.

In the past three years, Nuevo Leon state -- located in northeastern Mexico -- has seen an increase in violence due to clashes between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas gang over control of drug-trafficking routes to the United States.

Two mayors were assassinated in 2010. Last month, four civilians were injured when two grenades were thrown at a prison in Apodaca.

Monterrey, the state's capital, is a key industrial hub and Mexico's wealthiest city.

Since 2008, the government has stepped up the military's presence in Nuevo Leon as it tries to crack down on crime. It sent more troops to the state last November.

On Friday Calderon pledged to increase the presence of federal forces in Monterrey and northeastern Mexico to "restore to the people of Nuevo Leon the peace that has been lost."

In addition to the 1,500 troops heading to Monterrey, 1,500 federal police will be deployed to Nuevo Leon in the next several weeks, the state's public safety secretary told reporters Friday.

Thursday's attack has also drawn more scrutiny of the region's casinos. Authorities said Saturday that they had seized or blocked 2,800 slot machines at nine casinos under suspicion that they entered illegally.

More than 34,600 people have died since Calderon announced a crackdown on cartels in December 2006, according to government statistics. Other reports have listed a higher toll. The latest Mexican government tally was released in January. •

#############################################

#########################################

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Investing as little as 0.16 percent of the world's gross domestic product — or $198 billion per year — could give half a billion people regular access to safe drinking water within four years, a U.N. official said Friday.

That would halve the number of people who risk serious illness and death on a daily basis, the United Nations Environment Program said.

The findings are presented in the U.N.'s Green Economy report, which also warns that if the global community continues to ignore water services investments, demand for water risks outstripping supply by 40 percent before 2030.

UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall said the world total of people without access to safe drinking water currently totals around 1 billion people.

According to the report, people living in countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are particularly prone to catching waterborne diseases because of the poor water sanitation there.

"Accelerated investment in water-dependent ecosystems, water infrastructure and water management, coupled with effective policies, can boost water and food security, improve human health and promote economic growth," said U.N. Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Prof. Mike Young, lead author of the water chapter of the report, said that "without this investment and policy reform, water supply crises will become increasingly common."

UNEP said that more water productivity, recycling, new dams and desalination plants could largely help avoid increased drinking water scarcity but that money also needs to be put toward infrastructure, water policy reforms and technologies.

The findings were presented during this week's World Water Week in Stockholm. •

##################################################



######################################################

Blessings to you and yours, friends. Keep Safe!
Remember, Jesus could come back any time now. -Missygirl*