2010 WORLDS GONE WILD - QUAKES - FLOODS - BLIZZARDS

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

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;(FIERCE WINDS)
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.

Ice set to bring more chaos to Britain
By Avril Ormsby – Sat Dec 18, 8:04 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Britons Sunday faced little respite from the Arctic conditions that have disrupted travel and shopping plans on the last weekend before Christmas, normally one of the busiest times of the year.Treacherous icy conditions were forecast to replace the blizzards which forced many airports to close, trains to be delayed and motorists to become stranded in their vehicles.Britain's busiest airport London Heathrow, which was closed Saturday, may re-open Sunday, but operator BAA did not give a specific time.The Met Office said the snow would gradually ease in southern England, but heavy snow would still sweep in to northeast England and eastern Scotland, with up to 20 cm of fresh snow possible.

Temperatures could hit minus 15 Celsius in western Scotland.Britain traditionally experiences mild winters, but last year's was the coldest for 30 years and the latest big dump of snow is the second to smother the country and cause widespread disruption in the space of just three weeks.Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government's chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a step change in weather patterns due to climate change and whether it needed to spend more money on winter preparations.Some passengers at Heathrow were reported to have been stuck on the runway for a number of hours, while in the terminals they complained of pregnant women having to sleep on the floor and baggage strewn everywhere.We are totally abandoned,one caller told BBC television.Hammond said the government needed to keep under review the balance between what could be afforded on snow-clearing equipment and the level of disruption.Many Premier League soccer fixtures have been called off, including Sunday's top of the table clash between Chelsea and Manchester United.This December is likely to be Britain's coldest since 1910 if temperatures in the second half of the month are as low as they have been in the first, while media reports said Northern Ireland was suffering its worst weather in 25 years.(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Snow and ice disrupt pre-Christmas travel in Europe
By Avril Ormsby - DEC 19,10

LONDON (Reuters) – Europe saw little respite on Sunday from the Arctic conditions that closed airports and disrupted travel over the weekend before Christmas, traditionally one of the busiest times of the year.London's Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, which was forced to close both its runways for much of Saturday because of heavy snow, was not accepting inbound flights on Sunday and said only a few planes would be leaving.About 30 metric tons of snow were being shifted away from each parking stand around the planes, but ice was making it dangerous for the aircraft to be moved.There comes a point at which the weather has such an impact that it's simply not safe to fly, Andrew Teacher, spokesman for airport operator BAA, told BBC television.The runway at London's second busiest airport Gatwick was open but thousands of passengers faced delays and cancellations, as they were at most other British airports.A plane bound for Islamabad was stranded on the runway at Birmingham airport for more than six hours.We've had about three or four incidents where people have had panic attacks, chest pains, vomiting. They won't let us off the plane, passenger Marium Hassain told BBC television.

In Germany, Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said 560 flights had been canceled by Sunday afternoon and a large snow front coming in could mean more cancellations.At Germany's second largest airport in Munich, about 75 flights were canceled on Sunday out of 1,100 in all, mostly due to problems at other airports such as Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels, a spokesman said. Planes destined for London were being diverted to Munich and other German airports.Many trains were also delayed or canceled and the speed limit for intercity train travel was restricted across Germany.Snow blanketed northern France and authorities mobilized light armored personnel carriers in some areas to help motorists stranded on roadsides by the white stuff.Around 700,000 people had been expected to travel through Paris' two main airports over the weekend. But at the biggest, Roissy Charles de Gaulle, 40 percent of flights were canceled and over 5,000 people were stranded. At Orly, the city's second airport, 20 percent of flights were canceled.In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was closed because of the snow and a pop concert by Lady Gaga due to be held on Sunday was canceled because restrictions on heavy trucks in the Paris region prevented the show's equipment from arriving on time.

CLIMATE ADVICE

British Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government's chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a "step change" in weather patterns due to climate change and if it needed to spend more money on winter preparations.Britain traditionally experiences mild winters. But last year's was the coldest for 30 years and this December is likely to be its coldest since 1910.The Met Office said up to 20 cm of fresh snow was forecast on high ground in southwest England and south Wales, while in London the mercury was set to touch minus 6 Celsius on Monday.Snow combined with widespread ice and freezing temperatures will lead to the risk of significant disruption through Monday, Met Office Chief Forecaster Steve Willington said. British Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News: As my colleague, the transport secretary, has said, we haven't been equipped over the last few decades in this country to cope ... with every aspect of severe prolonged cold weather. We may have to look again at that if these things are to recur frequently.The government and transport operators drew criticism as the cold spells have seen trains delayed and canceled, roads closed and some drivers forced to sleep in their cars.(Additional reporting by Berlin, Frankfurt and Paris bureaux; writing by Janet Lawrence and Elizabeth Fullerton; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Series of storms threatens Calif. with flooding By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press – Sat Dec 18, 6:22 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – A series of winter storms bearing down on California Saturday was threatening parts of the state with flooding, and officials were posting mudflow warnings in areas recently affected by wildfires ahead of this weekend's rains.
Southern California will be hit especially hard by the storms, and officials were preparing for possible mudslides in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.This is one big mother and it's going to have a lot of waves in it, National Weather Service spokesman Bill Hoffer said.The storms could be the largest system the region has seen in the last decade, the agency said Saturday.Northern California was expecting 5 inches of rain in places over the weekend, and officials in San Francisco were distributing sandbags to residents.Southern California could see 2 to 4 inches along the coasts and valleys with triple that in the mountains.

The Central Valley will likely get 1 to 3 inches of rain by Monday with up to 15 inches of rain in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which could prompt flooding in streams and rivers, National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Dudley said Friday.There already have been reports of flooding across all lanes of the southbound Interstate 5 south of the Antelope Valley Freeway interchange in Southern California, the California Highway Patrol said.The patrol said Saturday that they'd already seen a fivefold increase in traffic accidents in Los Angeles County because of the weather. There were 264 accidents in comparison to 48 the same time last week.
The wet conditions were expected to last through Thursday morning with the weather drying up in time for the Christmas holidays.

2010's world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards By SETH BORENSTEIN and JULIE REED BELL, Associated Press - Sun Dec 19, 11:26 am ET

This was the year the Earth struck back.
EARTH DESTROYED WITH THE EARTH(BECAUSE OF SIN AND GODLESS PEOPLE)

GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)
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)(HAMAS) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.
It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves, said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.The term 100-year event really lost its meaning this year.And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes are pretty much constant, said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. All the change that's made is man-made.The January earthquake that killed well more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people — many of them living in poverty — and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths would have probably been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.In February, an earthquake that was more than 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile's bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.Climate scientists say Earth's climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.

In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.It's a form of suicide, isn't it? We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves, said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado.It's our fault for not anticipating these things. You know, this is the Earth doing its thing.
No one had to tell a mask-wearing Vera Savinova how bad it could get. She is a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow's record heat, smog and wildfires.I think it is the end of the world, she said.Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don't care about nature.The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave — setting a national record of 111 degrees — would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever.

These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming, said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. That's why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making, said a weary Debarati Guha Sapir, director for the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. It's almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting from it. We've created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact.Here's a quick tour of an anything but normal 2010:

HOW DEADLY: While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave, and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. Through mid-December there have been 20 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher, compared to the normal 16. This year is tied for the most big quakes since 1970, but it is not a record. Nor is it a significantly above average year for the number of strong earthquakes, U.S. earthquake officials say.Flooding alone this year killed more than 6,300 people in 59 nations through September, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, 30 people died in the Nashville, Tenn., region in flooding. Inundated countries include China, Italy, India, Colombia and Chad. Super Typhoon Megi with winds of more than 200 mph devastated the Philippines and parts of China. Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009, according to Swiss Re. The World Health Organization, which hasn't updated its figures past Sept. 30, is just shy of 250,000. By comparison, deaths from terrorism from 1968 to 2009 were less than 115,000, according to reports by the U.S. State Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.The last year in which natural disasters were this deadly was 1983 because of an Ethiopian drought and famine, according to WHO. Swiss Re calls it the deadliest since 1976.The charity Oxfam says 21,000 of this year's disaster deaths are weather related.

HOW EXTREME:After strong early year blizzards — nicknamed Snowmageddon — paralyzed the U.S. mid-Atlantic and record snowfalls hit Russia and China, the temperature turned to broil.The year may go down as the hottest on record worldwide or at the very least in the top three, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The average global temperature through the end of October was 58.53 degrees, a shade over the previous record of 2005, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
Los Angeles had its hottest day in recorded history on Sept. 27: 113 degrees. In May, 129 set a record for Pakistan and may have been the hottest temperature recorded in an inhabited location.In the U.S. Southeast, the year began with freezes in Florida that had cold-blooded iguanas becoming comatose and falling off trees. Then it became the hottest summer on record for the region. As the year ended, unusually cold weather was back in force.Northern Australia had the wettest May-October on record, while the southwestern part of that country had its driest spell on record. And parts of the Amazon River basin struck by drought hit their lowest water levels in recorded history.

HOW COSTLY: Disasters caused $222 billion in economic losses in 2010 — more than Hong Kong's economy — according to Swiss Re. That's more than usual, but not a record, Schraft said. That's because this year's disasters often struck poor areas without heavy insurance, such as Haiti.Ghulam Ali's three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family. It's what many Pakistanis earn in half a year.

HOW WEIRD:A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. Other volcanoes in the Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia sent people scurrying for safety. New York City had a rare tornado.A nearly 2-pound hailstone that was 8 inches in diameter fell in South Dakota in July to set a U.S. record. The storm that produced it was one of seven declared disasters for that state this year.There was not much snow to start the Winter Olympics in a relatively balmy Vancouver, British Columbia, while the U.S. East Coast was snowbound.In a 24-hour period in October, Indonesia got the trifecta of terra terror: a deadly magnitude 7.7 earthquake, a tsunami that killed more than 500 people and a volcano that caused more than 390,000 people to flee. That's after flooding, landslides and more quakes killed hundreds earlier in the year.Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.And in the United States, FEMA declared a record number of major disasters, 79 as of Dec. 14. The average year has 34.A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP runs 64 printed pages long.

The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion, said Greg Holland, director of the earth system laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.For example, even though it sounds counterintuitive, global warming likely played a bit of a role in Snowmageddon earlier this year, Holland said. That's because with a warmer climate, there's more moisture in the air, which makes storms including blizzards, more intense, he said.White House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters or do something about global warming: The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society's emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced.And that's just the natural disasters.It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes. BP's busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Mining disasters — men trapped deep in the Earth — caused dozens of deaths in tragic collapses in West Virginia, China and New Zealand. The fortunate miners in Chile who survived 69 days underground provided the feel good story of the year.In both technological and natural disasters, there's a common theme of pushing the envelope,Olson said.Colorado's Bilham said the world's population is moving into riskier megacities on fault zones and flood-prone areas. He figures that 400 million to 500 million people in the world live in large cities prone to major earthquakes. A Haitian disaster will happen again, Bilham said: It could be Algiers. it could be Tehran. It could be any one of a dozen cities.Borenstein reported from Washington. Reed Bell reported from Charlotte, N.C. Online:World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters: http://www.cred.be/
World Meteorological Organization: http://www.wmo.int
Swiss Re report on 2010 natural catastrophes: http://tinyurl.com/28jrpph
U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency disasters: http://tinyurl.com/c232yp

WW3 THE 3 WAVES THAT MARCH TO ISRAEL

AMOS 9:10
10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

DANIEL 11:40-45
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south( EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) and the king of the north (RUSSIA AND MUSLIM HORDES OF EZEK 38+39) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.(JORDAN)
42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.
44 But tidings out of the east(CHINA 2ND WAVE OF WW3) and out of the north(RUSSIA, MUSLIMS WHATS LEFT FROM WAVE 1) shall trouble him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.( 1/3RD OF EARTHS POPULATION)
45 And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.

REVELATION 14:18-20
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city,(JERUSALEM) and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.(200 MILES) (THE SIZE OF ISRAEL)

The Third and Final Wave of WW3 is when all Nations march to Jerusalem, but JESUS bodily returns to earth and destroys them,sets up his KINGDOM OF RULE FOR 1000 YEARS THEN FOREVER.

2ND WAVE CHINA AND KINGS OF THE EAST MARCH TO ISRAEL

REVELATION 16:12
12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.(THIS IS THE ATATURK DAM IN TURKEY,THEY CROSS OVER).

DANIEL 11:44 (2ND WAVE OF WW3)
44 But tidings out of the east(CHINA) and out of the north(RUSSIA, MUSLIMS WHATS LEFT FROM WAVE 1) shall trouble him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.( 1/3RD OF EARTHS POPULATION)

REVELATION 9:12-18
12 One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.
13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.(IRAQ-SYRIA)
15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.(1/3 Earths Population die in WW 3 2ND WAVE)
16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand:(200 MILLION MAN ARMY FROM CHINA AND THE KINGS OF THE EAST) and I heard the number of them.
17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.(NUCLEAR BOMBS)
18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.(NUCLEAR BOMBS)

UN Security Council meets on Korea tensions By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press - DEC 19,10

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council met in emergency session Sunday amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and a North Korean warning of a catastrophe if South Korea goes ahead with a live-fire drill.Russia called for the meeting, and Moscow wants the U.N.'s most powerful body to adopt a statement calling on North Korea and South Korea to exercise maximum restraint and urging immediate diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions.Russia borders North Korea and after China is considered the country with the closest ties to the reclusive communist government in Pyongyang. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Saturday the situation on the Korean Peninsula directly affects the national security interests of the Russian Federation.South Korea's military plans to conduct one-day, live-fire drills by Tuesday on the same front-line island the North shelled last month as the South conducted a similar exercise. The North warned that the drills would cause it to strike back harder than it did last month, when two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed on Yeonpyeong Island.South Korea says the drills are routine, defensive in nature and should not be considered threatening. The U.S. supports Seoul, a staunch ally, and says any country has a right to train for self-defense. But Russia and China, fellow veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council, have expressed concern.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has urged South Korea to cancel the drill to avoid escalating tensions.A Russian draft presidential statement circulated to Securtiy Council members and obtained by The Associated Press stresses the need for efforts to ensure a de-escalation of tension between the two Koreas and a resumption of dialogue and resolution of all problems dividing them exclusively through peaceful diplomatic means.It asks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to immediately send an envoy to both countries to consult on urgent measures to settle peacefully the current crisis situation in the Korean Peninsula.The council began meeting behind closed doors shortly after 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) and heard a briefing from U.N. political chief B. Lynn Pascoe on the situation in the Koreas.Pascoe echoed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who on Friday called the Nov. 23 attack on the tiny island of Yeonpyeong one of the gravest provocations since the end of (the) Korean War, according to a council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the consultations are closed.Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, said he is following events closely and is seriously concerned over the rising tensions.The diplomat said most council members want a statement that condemns North Korea for the Nov. 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and the March 26 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors and was blamed on a North Korean torpedo. But Russia and China just want the statement to urge calm and appoint an envoy, which most council members view as unfairly equating the actions of the two Koreas, the diplomat said.

Several bloody naval skirmishes occurred along the western sea border between the two Koreas in recent years, but last month's assault was the first by the North to target a civilian area since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The North does not recognize the U.N.-drawn sea border in the area.The North claims South Korea fired artillery toward its territorial waters before it unleashed shells on the island on Nov. 23, while the South says it launched shells southward, not toward North Korea, as part of routine exercises.New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a frequent unofficial envoy to North Korea and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has held three important meetings with top leaders in the foreign ministry and military during a four-day visit to Pyongyang and also called for maximum restraint.I hope that the U.N. Security Council will pass a strong resolution calling for self-restraint from all sides in order to seek peaceful means to resolve this dispute, Richardson said in a statement released by his U.S. office late Saturday. A U.N. resolution could provide cover for all sides that prevents aggressive military action.According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, North Korea has raised military readiness of its artillery unit along the west coast.It cited an unidentified South Korean government official who was also quoted as saying some fighter jets that had been inside the air force hangar in the west coast also came out to the ground. A South Korean Defense Ministry official declined to confirm the report, citing the issue's sensitivity. He asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media.The South Korean military will hold the drills on Monday if weather permits, the official said, without elaborating.The North's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that South Korea would face catastrophe if the drills take place, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

China, the North's key ally, has said it is unambiguously opposed to any acts that could worsen already-high tensions. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, called for restraint from all parties concerned to avoid escalation, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.Marines carrying rifles conducted routine patrols Sunday on Yeonpyeong Island. About 240 residents, officials and journalists remain on Yeonpyeong, said Lim Byung-chan, an official from Ongjin County, which governs the island. He said there is no immediate plan to order a mandatory evacuation to the mainland.Amid security jitters, nearly 800 out of 1,300 civilians living on the island moved to unsold apartments in Gimpo, west of Seoul, on Sunday, according to Ongjin County officials.Associated Press Writers Ahn Young-Joon on Yeonpyeong Island, Kim Kwang-Tae and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, David Nowak in Moscow, Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Anita Snow at the United Nations and AP Television News cameraman Kim Yong-ho on Yeonpyeong Island contributed to this report.

Congressman Paul says Fed transparency is his goal
DEC 19,10

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Congressman Ron Paul, the new head of the subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, said on Sunday he will seek greater transparency but will not be sending subpoenas to the central bank chairman from Day One.Paul, a longtime critic of the Fed, will be the new chairman of the domestic monetary policy subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee when the new Congress is seated in January.Now that doesn't mean that the first week in January I send over a subpoena for (Fed Chairman Ben) Bernanke and demand that he come over with a pile of papers, I don't think that would be logical, Paul said in an interview on C-SPAN.He will be sending requests for information to others at the Federal Reserve such as the accountants, and say this is what I want, and to see what happens, Paul said.And then they can still hide behind the law if I want to demand every transaction with foreign banks, he said, adding that it would benefit Americans to know who was getting bailed out.Paul has written a book called End the Fed and believes the dollar should be backed by gold or silver. The United States stopped linking the dollar to gold in 1971.Republicans will control the House of Representatives in January after winning a majority of seats in the November elections on a wave of anti-government and anti-incumbent sentiment.(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Doina Chiacu)