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Portugal said it could not cope alone in tackling the fires Dozens of wildfires are still raging out of control across Portugal, despite desperate efforts to contain them. The worst-hit areas include the central region, where fires are threatening the outskirts of the third-largest city of Coimbra, firefighters say. Fire-fighting aircraft from several EU states joined some 3,000 Portuguese firefighters following an urgent appeal for help by the government in Lisbon. The blazes have left at least 15 dead and 140,000 hectares destroyed. State of emergency Firefighters say more than 25 fires fanned by high winds are burning across Portugal,...

Below is excerpt of interest => whole article worth read, though: Exploitation of tragedy is a sport played not only by environmentalists. Insurer Munich Re used the event to renew its call to fight global warming, which the insurance industry has recently begun blaming for natural disasters. Concerned about large payouts for natural disaster claims, insurance companies are very eager to establish global warming as contributing to those disasters, so they can sue deep-pocket businesses supposedly responsible for that global warming.

I have been thinking about the earthquake that occurred in the Indian Ocean and the resulting massive ocean wave, a tsunami, that wreaked havoc throughout the area, affecting Sri Lanka, Thailand, and parts of Indonesia. Estimates of the toll are expected to exceed 40,000 dead. Some people would call it an act of God, but a term lawyers use is “force majeure.” Literally, a major or greater force and one understood to be a natural and unavoidable catastrophe that interrupts the expected course of events. It is a clause that excuses a party to a contract from liability. The Bible...

I was just reading another thread on this subject, when I came to the line stating that the quake intensity and frequency had diminished on Monday. That it complete eyewash - for whom I don't know. Evidently they don't want to scare the masses - just in case. The thread I'm referring to is located here.Below I'm posting the last three seismographs for you to see that this claim is bogus indeed. This swarm is appearing to grow, with over 1,000 earthquakes so far since Thursday. The depth of the quakes is still near the surface, and they are saying...

Tenta faces another cancer hurdle 'Earthquake' John Tenta has revealed that he is facing yet another type of cancer, this time in his lungs. After disclosing that he had cancer of the bladder in May, ending his in-ring career, Tenta endured chemotherapy for months. But Monday, he told his fans on the WrestleCrap.com newsboard that things had taken a turn for the worse... remainder of article

FRONT PAGE HEADLINE...Nothing follows yet......

Swamped by the worst floods in more than a century, citizens in Central Europe are fighting losing battles against rivers swelled to as much as four times regular depth. Lending a helping hand, one neighbor reaches out to another in Grimma, in German Saxony.In Dresden, Germany, the famous Semper opera house looms above swirling muddy brown water from the Elbe river that has jumped its banks.Regensburg, Bavaria: The Danube turns a basketball court into a water polo arena.Even small streams turn into raging destroyers overnight: the small town of Zeista (Saxony) is ravaged by the formerly placid Seidewitz.In Krems (Austria),...

Officials: Florida's emergency operations a model for the nation Monday, June 10, 2002 By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press TALLAHASSEE - With no storms swirling in the Atlantic, the state emergency operations center is quiet. The big room is empty and all but one of five huge video screens are blank. The other just shows scattered thunderstorms crossing the Florida Panhandle. But the first sign of a hurricane and the room will begin jumping with life. "When you're in here and you feel the environment and look up at all five of those screens ... and you've got satellite up...