NEW RUSSIA QUAKES

More Earthquakes in Russia to add to prophecy.

New series of quakes rock Russia's Kamchatka peninsula Sun Apr 30, 4:22 PM

ET VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AFP) - A series of earthquakes measuring from 5.5 to 6.9 on the Richter scale rocked Russia's fareastern Kamchatka peninsula, hitting the same spot where powerful tremors left hundreds of people without shelter last week, the Kamchatka seismological service said. The quakes damaged several buildings in Kamchatka's sparsely populated Koryakiya district but there were no casualties, an official with the emergencies ministry's far-eastern office said.

A bakery was damaged in the village of Korf, as a well as a power station which we had been about to relaunch after it had been repaired" following last week's quake, the official told AFP. A series of violent earthquakes measuring up to 7.9 on the Richter scale shook Koryakiya last week, affecting 12 villages with a total population of 12,000 people.

Dozens of people received mild injuries from the tremors, and hundreds were evacuated out of the quake zone. The Kamchatka peninsula, which is about the size of Japan, has a population density of less than one person per square kilometres (0.4 square miles). In 1952, the region was rocked by an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, the fourth-biggest since 1900, according to data from the US Geological Survey.

Violent storms lash Malaysia as the country becomes warmer: report Sun Apr 30,

5:02 PM ET KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Rising temperatures from global warming are creating violent storms in Malaysia which have killed several people and set buildings ablaze, a report said. Malaysia has experienced an unusual run of wet weather in recent months, with almost daily thunderstorms triggering car alarms and lightning strikes setting buildings alight. The warmer weather is forcing more moisture into the air and leading to the storms, the Star daily quoted environmentalist Gurmit Singh as saying. These are the chain reactions resulting from the changes in weather as it is all part of rising temperature or global warming," said Singh, executive director of the independent Centre for Environment, Technology and Development Malaysia.

Statistics from the Malaysian Meteorological Department show an increase of 0.8 degrees Celsius in the country's average temperature from 1970 to 2005, when it was 27.3 C (81.1 F), said the newspaper. It has been accepted that the greenhouse gases effect can cause severe weather becoming more severe," said the department's director-general Yap Kok Seng.

The heavy rain is creating big traffic jams in the capital, with roads deluged by flash floods and drains overflowing, while accidents are on the increase. Last week lightning killed two men and injured two others during heavy rain, while a family was evacuated from their Kuala Lumpur home after it was struck and caught on fire. A lightning strike on Friday on a fuel storage
tank in a port depot in Malaysia's south triggered a spectacular inferno that took hours to contain. Singh said the climatic extremes were also related to the cyclical La Nina, a weather phenomenon that affects the sea surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.
Yap, who also believed the weather could be caused by cyclical changes, said more rain was expected and warned of worsening conditions.

Cyclone Mala kills two in Myanmar Sun Apr 30, 10:22

AM ET YANGON (Reuters) - Cyclone Mala killed at least two people in Myanmar and damaged hundreds of homes and several factories before petering out over the weekend, state media and the Red Cross said on Sunday. Hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall struck a township near the capital Yangon late on Friday, tearing the roofs off five factories in two industrial parks, the Kyemon newspaper reported. Some 586 homes were damaged in Hlaing Thar Yar Township, 10 miles west of Yangon, Michael Annear, head of the disaster management unit for the International Federation of Red Cross in Southeast Asia, told Reuters.

The cyclone killed two people and injured 12, according to figures confirmed by the Red Cross, but state media put the number of injured at 21. Annear said a 4-member Red Cross team was assessing the damage in southern Rakhine state where the storm struck Gwa township, a coastal resort area. Mala lost intensity and turned into a tropical storm after it hit Myanmar's west coast, calming fears of a repeat of a 2004 disaster in which more than 100 people were killed.