A volcano in western Indonesia, Jakarta spewed out scorching hot lava and sand high into the sky early Sunday in its first eruption in 400 years. Government volcanologist Surono, who uses only one name, said Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province started rumbling a few days ago and the slight morning eruption has mostly stopped. It sent sand and ash up to 1.5 kilometers high but hot lava only moved near its crater. It caused no major damage and only dust covered plants and trees.

Surono said Mount Sinabung has last erupted in 1600, so observers don’t know the volcano eruption prototype and are monitoring it strongly for more activity. Evacuations on the volcano slopes started on Friday at the first signs of an activity. More than 10,000 people who fled are staying in government buildings, houses of worship and other evacuation centers in two nearby towns.

The government has allocated 7,000 masks to refugees and set up public kitchens so people can cook food, said Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency. Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is on the so-called “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

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According to a memo from the nation’s top drilling regulator; a six month ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would directly put more than 9,000 people out of work and indirectly have an effect on another 14,000 jobs, The federal document, which have weighed the economic effect and alternatives to the ban, was sent to Ken Salazar (Interior Secretary) on July 10 by Michael Bromwich. Ken Salazar issued a moratorium in June, but it was struck down by a federal judge in New Orleans after oil and gas drilling interests said it wasn’t justified following the Gulf oil spill.

The Barack Obama administration issued a new moratorium on July 13 three days after the memo that stressed out new evidence of safety concerns. The White House expects the modified ban will pass muster with the courts. The moratoriums were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 people. Moreover, millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf after the rig sank. Some energy specialist, engineering consultants and Gulf Coast leaders have joined Big Oil to ask Ken Salazar to change his mind. Drilling was well protected before the BP spill, they said, and Gulf communities that depend on the industry were suffering unjustly.

Matt Lee-Ashley (Interior Department spokesman) said the agency has been clear out that the economic impacts of the moratorium would need to be delivered and noted the Obama administration secured an agreement with BP to set up a $100 million fund for distressed rig workers. In the light of the present risks of deepwater drilling as illustrated by the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill and the potential effects of another spill, the moratorium is essential and appropriate. The worst case economic impact estimations from three months ago have not been understood. On the other side the reality on the ground recommend that the impacts are less than we originally projected as a potential worst-case scenario.

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A beachgoer in a remote area of northern New Zealand found a horrific sight when 58 pilot whales stranded on Karikari Beach. Only 15 of the animals were still alive when conservation officials arrived. The whales most likely became stranded sometime during the night, and that’s why so many died before being discovered said by Carolyn Smith of New Zealand Department of Conservation in Kaitaia.

The focal point for everyone right now was to try to refloat the survivors and to do that, officials will place the whales to face out to sea and hope that they swim back out when high tide comes. The whales have to be held in the water for at least half an hour to permit them to reorient ate themselves, before being released to hopefully swim back out to sea. A primary attempt to refloat the whales was not doing well Friday night. Moreover, conservation officials were going to look after the animals overnight in the hope of trying again, probably after moving them to Matai Bay, where sea environment could be more favorable for refloating.

The next effort would happen Saturday morning, said by Mike Davies, acting area manager at the Department of Conservation Kaitaia office. Far North Whale Rescue, which has a team of skilled volunteers, is working with the department to attain this. At present, New Zealand Far North region is experiencing torrential rain and wind, both a help and an obstruction to the rescue efforts, the Department of Conservation said.

It means the whales are not at peril of drying out, but it creates tricky conditions for rescuers. Interestingly adult pilot whales can measure up to 20 feet long and weigh up to 3 tons. Due to their social nature, they are often involved in group stranding, according to the American Cetacean Society. The ACS is a non-profit group based in California that works to shelter whales, dolphins and porpoises.

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Pakistan thanked the world for all possible aids to more than 20 million flood victims now know that nations and people around the globe are standing with them during the worst natural disaster the country has ever faced. Pakistan U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Haroon said the preliminary outpouring from some 70 countries was indeed heartening and a good beginning, although he stressed that the country will need much more help in the months and years to come.

The U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said donors had given just half of the $460 million and the U.N. appealed for more food, shelter and clean water for to up to 8 million flood victims over the next three months. He also insisted all the money was needed now. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that he was assured the $460 million goal is going to be easily met.

The U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told; The U.N. appeal wasn’t completely funded yet. At the moment, we are about 70 % funded, about $350 million and the situation in the last few days has improved very considerably in terms of funding and I think the appeal will be funded soon. The countries directly contributed to the Pakistani government, U.N. agencies and flood relief humanitarian organizations. My estimate is that there is a couple of hundred million outside the appeal that will go to helping flood victims. Aid groups and U.N. officials had concerned about a sluggish response to the flooding, theorizing that donors who have spent heavily on a string of massive disasters in recent years were reluctant to open their wallets yet again. Holmes stressed that the U.N. pledges have to be turned into real money to buy food, tents, drugs and water purification tablets and then have to be delivered to those areas in-fact a huge challenge. The U.N. will try to get farmers to begin planting again and establish the infrastructure damage and reconstruction cost which will no doubt be in the billions of dollars.

Abdullah Haroon highly thanked the United Nations particularly the U.N. chief, who flew to Pakistan, and General Assembly President Ali Abdessalam Treki, who called the aid meeting for showing sympathy and taking action when ot

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One of the world’s major diamond trading networks says it will expel members who knowingly trade Zimbabwean stones contaminated by allegations of killings and human rights abuses. The US based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network said on Monday that any of its 10,000 members suggesting Zimbabwean diamonds will also have their names published. The group said that though the world diamond control body approved a recent auction in the southern African country, it did not assurance the stones free of human rights violations. In the last week Zimbabwe held its first auction of some 900,000 carats of diamonds, ending a nine month ban. The Kimberley Process sanctioned stones from two mines from which soldiers had withdrawn and which monitor said were operating at minimum standards.

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A black bear cub in Florida warmly known as “jarhead” can finally take pleasure in a good meal. A clear plastic jar was removed from the 6 month old cub head after being wedged for at least 10 days. The cub poked its head into the jar when digging through garbage in a neighborhood in central Florida. The cub along with its mother and two other cubs was initially spotted on the edge of the Ocala National Forest near Weirsdale, Fla., Cathy Connolly, Biologists say the cub was days away from death because the jar made it unfeasible to eat or drink. The team had to sedate the mother bear and then grab the cub to remove the jar from the bear head.  After she awoke and care for the cubs, the bears were enthused to a less populated area nearby. Meanwhile the 6 month old cub was getting weaker and he walked with his head sunk down, The mother and cubs were captured and observed overnight before being released into the nearby forest. It is a lesson for people living close to wildlife.

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He is Britain’s most talked about little artist. His paintings get hefty sums and there is a long waiting list for his eagerly expected new works. It has all happened so rapidly and he is still getting used to the spotlight and Kieron Williamson fidgets a little when he is asked to share his thoughts on art. Kieron said; who has just turned 8; Cows are the easiest thing to paint. You don’t have to be concerned about doing so much detail. He also says, Horses are a lot harder. Because you have to get their legs right, and you have to make their back legs much bigger than their front. Paintbrush genius Kieron dubbed “mini Monet” by the British press is a global sensation.

All 33 of the pastels, watercolors and oil paintings in his newest exhibition sold, within half an hour, for a total of 150,000 pounds. Buyers from as far away as the USA lined up overnight outside the gallery, and there is a 3,000 strong waiting list for his Impressionistic landscapes of boat-dotted estuaries, snowy fields and wide marshland skies. He also has a website and a business card. Moreover, strangers approach him at the gallery, asking him to sign postcards of his work. Journalists from around the world travel to his small home town in eastern England to interview him and Kieron shrugs off the attention. He says it feels normal to me.

It absolutely doesn’t feel normal to his parents, Keith and Michelle Williamson. They are bewildered, proud and a slight anxious about their son’s aptitude and its effects. It has been awesome; said by Michelle Williamson, a 37 year old nutritional therapist. She and her 44 year old art dealer husband live in a small apartment with Kieron and his 6 year old sister, Billie-Jo.

Kieron was a normal, active little boy, and his parents were amazed when he asked for pencils and paper during a holiday in Cornwall two years ago. They were surprised when the then 5 year old shaped an accomplished picture of boats in a harbor. He progressed quickly to fully realized landscapes, many depicting the flat, open Norfolk countryside near their home. Even Keith and I don’t paint, so we find it hard to know what’s going on inside his head, Michelle said. We don’t be aware of it and even we don’t know where it comes from. But he is adamant it’s what he wants to do. Especially when your child has got such a gift and a talent, you have to encourage him.

That hasn’t stopped the Williamsons perturbing about whether they are doing the right thing in exposing him to so much attention. They showed Kieron’s effort to a local gallery, which has mounted two exhibitions and is helping them cope with the flood of global interest. It is not a usual thing to want to put your kid in the media spotlight, Michelle said. Hence, we have met so many sharks and all they see is the financial element. They don’t see the poignant stuff. You can’t break up the art from Kieron. A self possessed blond young boy, dressed up in a polo shirt, shorts and sneakers, Kieron doesn’t seem like a hothouse genius. He likes soccer he plays defense for his school team.

Kireon’s pointing at one landscape, when he starts to draw, with a positive attitude, with relaxed fluidity, all childishness disappears. Working from a photograph of a river at sunrise, Kieron quickly sketches the horizon, the mounds of trees and the line of the river, and then uses pastels to color the yellowy pink of the sky. His parents are pleased for people to watch him work it disproves any suspicions that the paintings are not his own. They come across that kind of skepticism at first, though Michelle Williamson says it has abated. Now here critical opinion on Kieron’s work is divided. One newspaper headline asked, “Is Kieron Britain’s most exciting painter?” But others have wondered whether Kieron’s paintings would be so well-regarded if he were an adult, and asked if his talent will endure and the precedents are mixed.

Most shining 8 year-old pianists or footballers don’t maintain it into adulthood, said Jack Boyle, a Glasgow based child psychologist. He advises the Williamsons not to worry too much about Kieron talent is unlikely to do him any damage. Children like being successful and they like being the greatest, Boyle said my sincere advice is? Take the money and run and milk it for every penny, but don’t spoil the child in the process. Build up his other interests and sell as many of the paintings as you can. At the moment, Michelle Williamson is looking forward to the start of the school year in September, when exhibitions and interviews will be swap by homework and normal childhood routines. The gallery is offering two new landscapes Kieron last work as a 7 year old and his first as an 8 year old by an online auction that closes Aug 20. His new exhibition is planned for next summer. Michelle Williamson says she and her husband won’t be upset if Kieron one day stops painting, as long as he is happy. We fully wait for Kieron to change his mind, But we know that whatever he ends up doing, Kieron is going to give it 200 percent. Kieron says he knows what he wants to be when he grows up painter and footballer. And he is keen to offer advice for other aspiring artists. Never give up and try and keep your buildings in a straight line. And don’t do a plain blue sky.

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Floods, melting ice, fires, and feverish heat from smoke-choked Moscow to water soaked Pakistan and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It is not just a portent of things to come, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way said by scientists.

The Geneva based World Meteorological Organizations says, the weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, even though those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming. The experts now see an imperative need for better ways to forecast extreme events like Russia heat wave and wildfires and the record flood devastating Pakistan. They will discuss such utensils in meetings this month and next in Europe and America.

Peter Stott a British government climatologist says, There is no time to waste, because societies must be equipped to face with global warming and modelers of climate systems are very keen to develop supercomputer modeling that would enable more detailed linking of cause and effect as a warming world shifts jet streams and other atmospheric currents. Those changes can cause weather havoc.

The U.N. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has long predicted that increasing global temperatures would generate more frequent and intense heat waves, and more intense rainfalls. In his latest assessment in 2007 the Nobel Prize-winning panel went beyond that. It said these tendencies have already been observed, in an increase in heat waves since 1950. Still, climatologists usually refrain from blaming warming for this drought or that flood, since so many others factor also affect the day’s weather.

Stott and NASA’s Gavin Schmidt said it is better to reflect in terms of odds and warming might double the chances for a heat wave that is precisely what’s happening; a lot more warm extremes and less cold extremes. However, WMO did point out, that this summer events fit the international scientist’s projections of more frequent and more severe extreme weather events due to global warming.

Virtually, in key cases they’re a perfect fit:

RUSSIA

It’s been the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia with Moscow temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees C) for the first time in Russian history. The drought there has sparked hundreds of wildfires in forests and dried peat bogs, blanketing western Russia with toxic smog. Another noteable point; Moscow’s death rate has doubled to 700 people a day. The drought abridged the wheat harvest by more than one third. The IPCC 2007 report predicted a doubling of catastrophic droughts in Russia this century and cited studies foreseeing disastrous fires during dry years, and Russia would suffer large crop losses.

PAKISTAN

The heaviest torrential monsoon rains on record 12 inches in one 36-hour period have sent rivers rampaging over huge swaths of countryside. This left 14 million Pakistanis homeless or otherwise affected, and killed more than 1,500 people. The Pakistan government calls it the most horrible natural disaster in the nation’s history. A warmer atmosphere can hold and discharge more water even. The IPCC 2007 report said rains have grown heavier for 40 years over north Pakistan and predicted greater flooding this century in south Asia monsoon region.

CHINA

The WMO says, China is witnessing its most dreadful floods in decades, mainly in the northwest province of Gansu. Here, floods and landslides last weekend killed at least 1,117 people and left more than 600 people missing while apprehension swept away or buried beneath mud and debris. The IPCC reported in 2007 that rains had greater than before in northwest China by up to 33 percent since 1961, and floods nationwide had increased sevenfold since the 1950s. It forecast still more frequent flooding this century.

ARCTIC

The researchers last week spotted a 100 square mile chunk of ice calved off from the great Petermann Glacier in Greenland far northwest. It was the most gigantic ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half century of observation. The massive iceberg come into sight just five months after an international scientific team published a report saying ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet is expanding up its northwest coast from the south. Changes in the ice sheet are happening quickly, and we are absolutely losing more ice mass than we had anticipated, said by one of NASA scientists, Isabella Velicogna.

In the Arctic Ocean, the summer melt of huge ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions. Satellite data show the ocean area covered by ice last month was the second lowest ever recorded for July. The melting of land ice into the oceans is causing about 60 percent of the accelerating increase in sea levels worldwide, with thermal expansion from warming waters causing the rest. The WMO’S World Climate Research Program says sea levels are increasing by 1.34 inches per decade, about twice the 20th century average.

Worldwide temperature readings demonstrate that this January to June was the hottest first half of a year in 150 years of global climate record keeping. Meteorologists say 17 countries have recorded all time high temperatures in 2010, more than in any other year. Scientists hold responsible the warming on carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases pouring into the atmosphere from power plants, cars and trucks, furnaces and other fossil fuel burning industrial and residential sources. Experts are growing ever more vocal in urging sharp decrease in emissions, to safe the climate that has nurtured modern civilization. dropping emissions is somewhat everyone is capable of, Nanjing based climatologist Tao Li told in China, at the present the world’s No. 1 emitter, ahead of the U.S. But not everyone is willing to act. The U.S. remains the only major industrialized country not to have legislated caps on carbon emissions.

The U.S. inaction dating back to the 1990s is a vital reason global talks have bogged down for a pact to succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol. That is the relatively feeble accord on emissions cuts adhered to by all other industrialized states. Governments around the world, particularly in poorer nations that will be hard hit, are scrambling to discover ways and money to adapt to shifts in climate and rising seas. The coming meetings of climatologists in Paris, Britain and Colorado will be one step toward adaptation, seeking ways to identify trends in extreme events and better means of forecasting them.

A U.N. specialist in natural disasters says a lot more needs to be done and pointed to aggravating factors in the latest climate catastrophes: China failure to stem deforestation, contributing to its deadly mudslides; Russia poor forest management, feeding fires; and the settling of poor Pakistanis on flood plains and dry riverbeds in the densely populated country, squatters turf that suddenly turned into torrents. But the most important trend we need to look at is raising vulnerability, the fact we have more people living in the wrong places, doing the wrong things.

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The death toll climbed to more than 1,300 people in Pakistan as the national military and emergency services struggled to deal with with the flood waters that have washed across the landscape. The PDA (Pakistan Disaster Authority) has confirmed 1,313 deaths; even however officials say the number could reach 1,500. The authority has also said; 1,588 people have been injured and 352,291 people have been rescued and more than 722,000 houses have been damaged. The Pakistani military has 55 helicopters and 621 boats taking part in help and rescue efforts. The flooding, which has affected more than 14 million people across the country, started in the northwest and has threatened places as far south as the port city of Karachi. Still many parts of southern Pakistan, the worst is yet to come. According to the Pakistani Meteorological Department, the Indus River at Kotri in Southern Sindh Province is possibly to attain a very high to exceptionally high flood level, and flooding of low lying areas of district of Hyderabad, Thatta and adjoining areas in South Sindh. Food and housing shortages are widespread.

The United Nations will launch a preliminary Pakistani emergency response plan with $400 million more in aid. U.S. emergency relief teams continued to arrive in Peshawar to help the affected people. The U.S. Agency for International Development has devoted $55 million in aid to international organizations and non-governmental organizations. The United States has provided more than 435,000 meals. This help is in addition to U.S. military efforts, which comprises rescue airlifts, food supplies and other deliveries provided by the Pentagon. Of the total, $20 million will be used to develop humanitarian operations farther south as the flood zone expands.

Many Pakistanis have not been happy with the government reply to the floods, calling it slow and ineffective. The Taliban offer of aid may be an attempt to win the hearts and minds of flood victims. Pakistani President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari has taken much of that heat. He is in England for talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron during the worst of the crisis.

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Pakistan President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari was to attend a rally as protesters demonstrated against his presence in Britain during the flooding disaster back home. Mr. Asif Ali Zardari was due to speak at a political event in Birmingham central England, for Pakistan People’s Party members and leading figures in the Pakistani community in Britain. Hundreds of demonstrators from different standpoints gathered outside the International Convention Centre venue chanting and waving placards. It comes the day when after Mr. Asif Ali Zardari held talks with British PM David Cameron, when the pair decided to step up their anti-terror cooperation following Cameron controversial claims about Pakistani approach towards terrorism. But back at home, historical flooding disaster affecting up to 15 million people in Pakistan, Zardari has come under heavy fire from some quarters in Pakistan and Britain for continuing with his trip to Europe during the crisis. Few demonstrators held up shoes to pictures of Zardari, whereas others held placards reading “1000s dying, Pakistan president is holidaying, Thousands killed, and millions are homeless, what president is laughing for? Are the Asif Zardaris enjoying England while Pakistan drowns?

Head of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan was among those people who protesting against Zardari.  He told, his own people are dying for food, there is calamity over there, and he should be there organizing for his own people, Instead of here with larger number of people. The Pakistan government is paying all the expense for that. That money should be spent on the flood effecting people of Pakistan not on himself. There is no self-respecting leader in the world that in this time of terrible national crisis, while their people are drowning, and he is the man who is enjoying in drowning, he is having lavish dinners in the company of his die-hard supporters.

Bilawal Bhutto, son of Zardari speaks in the defense of his father, He is doing the best he can do and what he thinks is best to assist the people of Pakistan. His personal presence in Pakistan would not be proficient to raise this much money and multi-million dollar donations had been made by France, Britain and Abu Dhabi on the way. If he thought he could be more helpful in Pakistan, I am sure he would be there. The floodwaters have overwhelmed the lives of a people who have already suffered the most at the hands of terrorists. I am sure this is not a time to play politics. We need to do best whatever is necessary to help our brothers and sisters in Pakistan.

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