VOLCANO WIPES OUT 3 VILLAGES

Thursday August 17,2006 1:30 PM

1-Volcano wipes out 3 villages in Ecuador. 2-Mild quake in Pakistan injures 4 people. 3-Tropical storm nearing Japan, landfall likely. 4-Aid officials from NKorea and South to meet amid huge flood damage. 5-More than 600 dead in Ethiopia floods. 6-Rare floods leave hundreds homeless in northern Niger desert.

GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Volcano wipes out 3 villages in Ecuador By GONZALO SOLANO, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

QUITO, Ecuador - A volcanic eruption in Ecuador's Andes mountains destroyed three villages, killed at least one man and left more than 60 others missing, the mayor of a village on the volcano's slope said Thursday. One body was recovered after the overnight eruption of lava from Tungurahua, in the country's high Andes, and four others were believed to be under the rubble, Penipe Mayor Juan Salazar said.Salazar told Channel 4 television that the villages of Chilibu, Choglontuz and Palitagua no longer exist. Everything is wiped out.This is an indescribable catastrophe, Salazar said. The houses have collapsed. The rocks that fell caused injuries and burns in the city of Riobamba and in Penipe.Salazar said there were 60 other people on the high flanks of the volcano whom officials could not get to Thursday morning.

Choglontuz, Penipe and another village were ordered evacuated on Wednesday hours before the 16,575-foot volcano unleashed gas and ash some 5 miles into the sky, according to a report by Ecuador's Geophysics Institute.Salazar said 3,200 people were evacuated Wednesday from the three communities. He did not say how many remained in the villages.Dr. Hernan Ayala told Channel 4 TV that about 50 people from Penipe were treated at a medical center in Riobamba for burns caused by lava flows and incandescent rocks that burned them as they tried to flee.They were also burned by vapor and the elevated heat in the zone. It was a scene of chaos, a Dantesque situation,he said. "There are six whom we consider the most grave, one of them with burns over 85 percent of the body.The death reported Thursday was the first reported from a Tungurahua eruption since the volcano rumbled back to life in 1999 after staying dormant for eight decades.

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Mild quake in Pakistan injures 4 people Wed Aug 16, 2:47 PM ET

QUETTA, Pakistan - A magnitude 4.4 quake rattled parts of southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, injuring four people and damaging several homes, an official said. Panicked people came out of their homes after feeling the quake in Sibi and Dhandar, two remote towns about 90 miles east of Quetta, said Mohammed Nafay, a government official in the area.He said the injured had been transported to a hospital, but gave no further details.Last year, a magnitude 7.6 quake killed 80,000 in northern Pakistan and its part of Kashmir, and since then many quake survivors have been living in tents donated by the world community.Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province.

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Tropical storm nearing Japan, landfall likely Thu Aug 17, 3:05 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tropical storm Wukong hung nearly stationary off southwestern Japan on Thursday, threatening prolonged heavy rains and landfall overnight. Wukong -- meaning Monkey King, a legendary Chinese hero -- was 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Miyazaki at 2:45 p.m. (0545 GMT), nearly unchanged from its morning position.It had slowed slightly and was heading west at 15 km an hour, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said, warning that its slowness meant heavy rains would linger in one area for a long time, increasing the chance of flooding.The storm maintained winds of up to 83 km (52 miles) an hour at its center and was expected to bring up to 300 mm (12 inches) of rain to some parts of Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, by Friday morning.

Landfall on southern Kyushu was likely on Thursday night or possibly early on Friday, a Meteorological Agency official said, but added that the storm appeared to be shifting direction.The storm is likely to head in a more northern direction than previously expected, but its movements are extremely difficult to predict right now so almost anything is possible,he said.The northerly shift means the storm is now likely to head up the Korean peninsula, according to the Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com) Web site, which also predicted it would weaken to a tropical depression on Friday.The Web site had earlier shown the storm heading toward the eastern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu.

Aid officials from NKorea and South to meet amid huge flood damage report by Jun Kwanwoo Thu Aug 17, 7:08 AM ET

SEOUL (AFP) - Red Cross officials from North and South Korea will hold weekend talks on aid for the North after severe floods, officials have said, but international organisations cast doubt on one report of tens of thousands dead or missing. The Unification Ministry said in a statement Thursday that Pyongyang had agreed to Saturday's working-level talks at the North's Mount Kumgang, which would focus on Seoul's proposal to supply rice and construction materials.The aid talks are taking place amid varying reports on the scale of flood damage in North Korea, which was hit hard by torrential rain in mid-July.Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group and long-term aid partner for North Korea, reported Wednesday the floods left 54,700 people dead or missing and 2.5 million homeless.

The figure is far worse than the damage reports by the communist state's official media or the Red Cross.The official (North) Korean Central News Agency reported last month hundreds of people dead or missing but gave no follow-up reports.On Thursday the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which has provided assistance following the floods, said it believed Pyongyang's official figures were more credible.The North Korean government tally shows 150 people were killed and 12,500 people were made homeless, with 23,000 houses destroyed or damaged, said Helena Laatio, the Red Cross spokeswoman in Beijing.The more recent figures we've seen or reported from the government now speak of several hundreds dead or missing, rather than what this organization is quoting,said Alistair Henley, head of the Red Cross regional delegation office in Beijing.

We would like to get updated figures from the government but I just find it incredible that there are these figures of more than 54,000.Henley also cast doubt on the figure of 2.5 million homeless, saying the floods did not badly affect densely populated cities such as Pyongyang.A spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme office in Beijing also expressed surprise at the Good Friends' assessment.We went to a couple of affected areas and did see quite a lot of damage. It's impossible for us to extrapolate from that but certainly 54,000 is a huge number,said Gerald Bourke.South Korea last week decided to provide 10 billion won (10.4 million dollars) to civic groups to help buy aid such as rice, flour, medicine and construction equipment.The Seoul government said it would also send its own shipment of rice, reportedly 100,000 tonnes, and equipment to the North through the Red Cross.

The South had suspended rice aid and other humanitarian assistance for the North in protest at its July 5 missile tests.But the North last week appealed to South Korean groups for help and the Seoul government said it would assist civic groups offering aid.

North Korea is suffering from flood damage. The (South Korean) government's assistance for civilian aid will help create favorable situations in relations with North Korea,Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said. Serious flooding helped trigger a famine in the mid-1990s in which aid groups estimate some two million North Koreans died. A decade later the country is still unable to feed all of its 23 million people and depends heavily on outside food aid. Decades of reckless deforestation have stripped North Korea of tree cover that provides natural protection from catastrophic flooding, leaving the soil vulnerable to landslides on a massive scale.
Energy-starved residents have used every scrap of wood from the countryside to cook food or heat homes through the bitter winters.

More than 600 dead in Ethiopia floods By LES NEUHAUS, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 16, 3:05 PM ET

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Flooding from 11 days of heavy rain has killed at least 626 people across Ethiopia, and authorities Wednesday braced for a rising death toll as overwhelmed rescuers struggled to locate missing villagers. Rivers in southern, northern and eastern Ethiopia burst their banks but forecasters predicted even more rain. The death toll in southern Ethiopia was at 364, and police there said it could reach 1,000 while another 256 were killed in the east and six in the north.According to the U.N., 300 people are still missing in the east and police said they are calling off the search for bodies in the region while continuing their search and rescue in the south.

Things are getting out of control,said Inspector Daniel Gezahenge, a spokesman for the southern regional police. We need additional helicopters and boats for rescuing.The country's rescue efforts have been bolstered by the United Nations and other international agencies, but officials say it's not enough.We are appealing to aid agencies and the international community for medical supplies, food, clean water, blankets and anything that can help, Daniel said. "There are dead bodies and animals in the water making the likelihood for a disease outbreak very high.Sisay Tadesse, spokesman for the government-run Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Agency, said some countries are preparing to send search and rescue teams, but he did not name the countries.Daniel said workers were burying most bodies immediately to prevent a disease outbreak. The nearest morgue was more than 124 miles away from the flood area.

Daniel said the water level is rising along River Kibish, near the Omo Valley in the south, where as many as 10,000 people have been stranded.Sisay said the government is planning emergency evacuations of villages that are threatened.The situation is very alarming on the ground, he said. For the time being we have 14 boats in the rescue effort. We are doing our best to rescue people in the threatened areas.Abnezer Ngowi, the U.N. World Food Program's acting country director in Ethiopia, said the floods are an unprecedented disaster,in the country.It is a terrible situation, children are being orphaned and residents in the communities are undergoing a horrible event, the loss of life due to the floods is terrible,said Ngowi.Rescuers fear a cholera outbreak among survivors because it is transmitted through contaminated water and is linked to poor hygiene, overcrowding and bad sanitation. Symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting, which can kill unless treated quickly.

The rains, which usually fall between June and September, are some of the heaviest seen in a country that frequently suffers severe drought and where millions depend on international aid for food.Ethiopia's weather agency predicted more heavy rains in the coming days, prompting the government to issue flood warnings along the country's longest river, the Awash, which stretches 746 miles.

Rare floods leave hundreds homeless in northern Niger desert Wed Aug 16, 3:37 PM ET

NIAMEY (AFP) - Torrential rains have left about a thousand people homeless over the past month in Ingal, a Tuareg region in the heart of the Sahel desert in Niger, a local governor said. Many houses have been damaged and almost a hundred families, totalling a thousand people, have found themselves homeless Abba Malam Boukar, the governor of the nearby town of Agadez, said in a telephone interview with AFP.Neighbouring Libya Tuesday dispatched by air humanitarian aid including tents, medicines and clothes to the disaster victims.The Niger government and mining companies exploiting uranium in the north of the country have also distributed food and medicinal drugs.Rain is quite rare in the northern desert of Niger, and a few tens of millimetres of rain are sometimes enough to crumble the houses built with clay mortar.Located about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Agadez, Ingal hosts a popular annual stock breeders' festival, whose 2006 edition is due next month.