Colorado wildfire grows out of control

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) ? A wildfire near Colorado Springs has quickly grown to more than 2,000 acres and prompted thousands of residents to flee their homes, while another fire to the north claimed more than a dozen cabins and structures after sweeping through a Rocky Mountain neighborhood.

Hot, dry and gusty conditions are expected to continue into Sunday after fueling the two fires that erupted a day earlier. At least seven wildfires are now burning across Colorado, where officials have been challenged by one of the most severe wildfire seasons in recent memory.

The larger of the two new fires Saturday was the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, which flared up around noon. The Colorado Springs Gazette reported early Sunday that the 5,000 residents of Manitou Springs, just several miles west of Colorado Springs, were ordered to evacuate.

Evacuation orders also had been in place on the west side of Colorado Springs and in the towns of Cascade and Ute Pass.

In some neighborhoods, Colorado Springs police cruisers rolled down streets, issuing the order to leave through a loudspeaker.

"Colorado Springs Police Department," an officer said. "This is a mandatory evacuation notice. Evacuate now."

Hundreds of other residents were under voluntary evacuation orders and have been packing up, the newspaper reported.

The fire was zero percent contained, but no structures had been claimed by the fire, and homes in Colorado Springs or Manitou Springs were not immediately threatened, authorities said.

Fire officials in the two towns said the evacuations were in place as a precaution.

"We're looking around 10, 11 o'clock in the morning. The temperatures are going to start going up, the humidity is going to start going down. That's when fires can change their behavior dramatically," said the Rev. David Hunting, the Manitou Springs fire department's chaplain and public information officer.

Meanwhile, crews near the mountain community of Estes Park were mopping up after the Woodland Heights fire that also sparked Saturday destroyed 21 structures.

The Denver Post reports investigators are determining whether the fire started in a cabin before spreading or started as a wildfire before moving toward the homes.

The fire was attacked quickly by air and ground crews.

"Even though we lost 21 (structures), which is a huge tragedy, we saved many homes because of firefighters' efforts," the Post reported Estes Park Fire Chief Scott Dorman as telling evacuees.

Firefighters contending with the largest and most expensive fire in Colorado history gave up some ground before the weekend. Crews stationed near threatened homes Friday had to retreat for their safety, and containment slipped from 60 percent to 45 percent.

The fire near Fort Collins has scorched more than 118 square miles and destroyed at least 191 homes.

Heat that set back firefighting efforts Saturday are expected to continue Sunday, with the National Weather Service forecasting temperatures nearing 100 degrees throughout much of the state.

Elsewhere in the West, firefighters made progress against wildfires in Utah, New Mexico and California.

In Utah, about 2,300 Utah wildfire evacuees were allowed to return to their homes Saturday evening after officials determined the blaze no longer posed a threat to them.

The decision came after the fire had burned Friday within a quarter mile of some homes in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Teresa Rigby said.

The fire that officials believe was started Thursday by target shooters was 30 percent contained Saturday evening, with full containment expected Tuesday.

Crews also were battling a 16,500-acre brush fire on high desert near the town of Delta in central Utah.

In California, a wildfire that broke out about 60 miles north of Los Angeles has triggered evacuations of campgrounds around an off-road recreation area. The Ventura County Fire Department says the fire was reported shortly after noon Saturday near the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area. It has burned at least 400 acres. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Hungry Valley is located along the Interstate 5 corridor, in Gorman.

In New Mexico, a lightning-caused wildfire that destroyed 242 homes and businesses is 90 percent contained after crews got a break in the weather. Heavy rain Friday helped crews increase containment lines on the 69-square-mile fire near Ruidoso that began June 4.

Meanwhile, the more than 464-square-mile Whitewater-Baldy blaze, the largest in state history, is 87 percent contained. It began May 16 as two lightning-caused blazes that merged to form one fire.

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Turkey turns to NATO after Syria downs jet

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is to demand backing from its NATO allies on Tuesday at a special meeting called after Syrian troops shot down a Turkish warplane last week in an incident Damascus said was self-defense but which Ankara branded an "act of aggression".

It is only the second time in NATO's 63-year history that it has convened under Article 4 of its charter which provides for consultations when a member state feels its territorial integrity, political independence or security is under threat.

Turkey rejected assertions from Damascus that its forces had no option but to fire on the F-4 jet as it flew over Syrian waters close to the coast on Friday.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Turkey condemned the "hostile act by the Syrian authorities against Turkey's national security", saying it posed "a serious threat to peace and security in the region".

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told a news conference Syria's actions "would not go unpunished".

The incident has further heightened tensions between Turkey and Syria already strained to near breaking point over the 16-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Though not known for his restraint, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has so far been measured in his response, perhaps due to Western reluctance to commit to any military action and wary himself of anything that could trigger a regional sectarian war.

European Union foreign ministers called on Monday for Turkey to show restraint, saying they would increase pressure on Assad.

"Military intervention in Syria is out of the question," said Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal.

After a seven-hour Turkish cabinet meeting in which an air force chief gave a detailed briefing on Friday's incident, Arinc said Erdogan would make an announcement on Syria on Tuesday.

Syria's description of the event as an act of self defense, though tempered with commitment to a "neighborly relationship", seemed likely to further anger Ankara.

ACT OF DEFENCE

"The plane disappeared and then reappeared in Syrian airspace, flying at 100 meters altitude and about 1-2kms (0.6-1.2 miles) from the Syrian coast," Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a Damascus news conference.

"We had to react immediately, even if the plane was Syrian we would have shot it down," he said. "The Syrian response was an act of defense of our sovereignty carried out by anti-aircraft machinegun which has a maximum range of 2.5 km."

Syria warned Turkey and NATO against retaliating.

"NATO is supposed to be there to strengthen countries," said Makdissi. "If their meeting is for hostile reasons (they should know that) Syrian land and waters are sacred."

The only other time NATO has convened under Article 4 was in 2003 to discuss the Iraq war, again at the request of Turkey.

The unarmed reconnaissance jet had briefly entered Syrian airspace as it approached land after patrolling the eastern Mediterranean, Arinc said, but was warned by Turkish radar controllers and immediately left and turned again out to sea. It then made another approach to land when it was shot down 13 miles off the coast in international airspace, he said, out of the reach of Syria's anti-aircraft guns

"According to the data in our hands, it points to our plane being shot by a laser or heat-guided surface-to-air missile. The fact our plane was not given an early radar warning, suggests it was not a radar-guided missile," said Arinc.

By invoking Article 4 of the NATO charter, rather than Article 5 which calls for military action, Turkey has signaled it wants action against Syria short of armed intervention.

"Ankara itself has been averse to consider military action against Syria so far. So it is likely that the invocation of Article 4 is designed to put more diplomatic pressure on Assad," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

DESERTION

In shell-shattered districts of Homs, the heart of the uprising against Assad, rebels battled troops as aid workers tried to evacuate civilians. Turkish television reported the desertion of a Syrian general and other officers across the border.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was again trying to arrange a safe evacuation of trapped civilians from Homs. But anti-government activists reported heavy shelling on central districts, including Jouret al-Shiyah and al-Qarabis. Video showed detonations and machinegun bursts from the skeletal remains of abandoned apartment blocks.

The activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Assad's troops carried out raids and arrests in areas still under army control, and heavy fighting between government forces and rebel fighters was reported in the opposition centers of Idlib, Deir al-Zor and Deraa, the birthplace of the uprising.

The United Nations has said more than 10,000 people have been killed by government forces, while Syria has said at least 2,600 members of the military and security forces have been killed by what it calls foreign-backed "Islamist terrorists."

The intensification of the fighting has raised fears in Turkey of a flood of refugees and a slide into ethnic and religious warfare that could envelop the region. Ankara, like the West, is torn between a wish to remove Assad and the fear that any armed intervention could unleash uncontrollable forces.

(Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Oliver Holmes and Mirna Sleiman in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, David Brunnstrom in Washington and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Significant sea-level rise in a two-degree warmer world

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2012) ? Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several metres in coming centuries, if global warming carries on. Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, global-mean sea level could continue to rise, reaching between 1.5 and 4 metres above present-day levels by the year 2300, with the best estimate being at 2.7 metres, according to a study just published in Nature Climate Change. However, emissions reductions that allow warming to drop below 1.5 degrees Celsius could limit the rise strongly.

The study is the first to give a comprehensive projection for this long perspective, based on observed sea-level rise over the past millennium, as well as on scenarios for future greenhouse-gas emissions.

"Sea-level rise is a hard to quantify, yet critical risk of climate change," says Michiel Schaeffer of Climate Analytics and Wageningen University, lead author of the study. "Due to the long time it takes for the world's ice and water masses to react to global warming, our emissions today determine sea levels for centuries to come."

Limiting global warming could considerably reduce sea-level rise

While the findings suggest that even at relatively low levels of global warming the world will have to face significant sea-level rise, the study also demonstrates the benefits of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius and subsequent temperature reductions could halve sea-level rise by 2300, compared to a 2-degree scenario. If temperatures are allowed to rise by 3 degrees, the expected sea-level rise could range between 2 and 5 metres, with the best estimate being at 3.5 metres.

The potential impacts are significant. "As an example, for New York City it has been shown that one metre of sea level rise could raise the frequency of severe flooding from once per century to once every three years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, co-author of the study. Also, low lying deltaic countries like Bangladesh and many small island states are likely to be severely affected.

Sea-level rise rate defines the time for adaptation

The scientists further assessed the rate of sea-level rise. The warmer the climate gets, the faster the sea level climbs. "Coastal communities have less time to adapt if sea-levels rise faster," Rahmstorf says.

"In our projections, a constant level of 2-degree warming will sustain rates of sea-level rise twice as high as observed today, until well after 2300," adds Schaeffer, "but much deeper emission reductions seem able to achieve a strong slow-down, or even a stabilization of sea level over that time frame."

Building on data from the past

Previous multi-century projections of sea-level rise reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were limited to the rise caused by thermal expansion of the ocean water as it heats up, which the IPCC found could reach up to a metre by 2300. However, this estimate did not include the potentially larger effect of melting ice, and research exploring this effect has considerably advanced in the last few years. The new study is using a complementary approach, called semi-empirical, that is based on using the connection between observed temperature and sea level during past centuries in order to estimate sea-level rise for scenarios of future global warming.

"Of course it remains open how far the close link between temperature and global sea level found for the past will carry on into the future," says Rahmstorf. "Despite the uncertainty we still have about future sea level, from a risk perspective our approach provides at least plausible, and relevant, estimates."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Schaeffer, M., Hare, W., Rahmstorf, S., Vermeer, M. Long-term sea-level rise implied by 1.5? C and 2? C warming levels. Nature Climate Change, 2012 DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE158

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Court rejects corporate campaign spending limits

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending.

By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices.

The majority turned away pleas from the court's liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because massive campaign spending since the January 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.

The same five justices said in 2010 that corporations have a constitutional right to be heard in election campaigns. The decision paved the way for unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in elections for Congress and the president, as long as the dollars are independent of the campaigns they are intended to help. The decision, grounded in the freedom of speech, appeared to apply equally to state contests.

But Montana aggressively defended its 1912 law against a challenge from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits, and the state Supreme Court sided with the state. The state court said a history of corruption showed the need for the limits, even as Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his Citizens United opinion that independent expenditures by corporations "do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia, as well as Sen. John McCain and other congressional champions of stricter regulations on campaign money, joined with Montana.

Two liberal justices who were in dissent in Citizens United ? Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer ? already had challenged Kennedy's view that the independent campaign spending could not be corrupting by virtue of the absence of links to a campaign.

When the court blocked the Montana ruling in February, Ginsburg issued a brief statement for herself and Breyer saying that campaign spending since the decision makes "it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'"

Ginsburg appeared to be referring to the rise of unregulated super PACs that have injected millions of dollars into the presidential and other campaigns. She said the case "will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway."

The corporations that sued over the law said it could not remain on the books after the Citizens United decision.

Montana urged the high court to reject the appeal, or hold arguments and not issue what the court calls a summary reversal. The prevailing side in the lower court almost always strives to avoid high court review. But Montana and its supporters hoped a thorough debate over the Citizens United decision would lead to its reconsideration or at least limits on its reach.

The case is American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, 11-1179.

Associated Press

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California sea levels to rise 5-plus feet this century, study says

Sea levels along the California coast are expected to rise up to 1 foot in 20 years, 2 feet by 2050 and as much as 5 1/2 feet by the end of the century, climbing slightly more than the global average and increasing the risk of flooding and storm damage, a new study says.

That's because much of California is sinking, extending the reach of a sea that is warming and expanding because of climate change, according to a report by a committee of scientists released Friday by the National Research Council.

In Washington and Oregon, where geological processes are flexing the land upward, researchers predict a less dramatic sea level rise that will register below the global average.

The report, commissioned by California, Oregon, Washington and several federal agencies, is the closest look yet at how global warming ? which causes ocean water to expand and ice to melt ? will raise sea levels along the West Coast.

Tide gauges show that the world's oceans have risen about 7 inches in the last century, and that rate is accelerating, the report notes.

"Sea level rise isn't a political question, it's a scientific reality," said Gary Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the committee that produced the report.

Globally, the study predicts up to 9 inches of sea level rise by 2030, 1 1/2 feet by 2050 and 4 1/2 feet by 2100.

The projections are largely in line with other recent scientific estimates but substantially higher than the 2007 figures by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because they factor in a greater contribution from melting ice.

The study was drafted by a committee of scientists formed as a result of a 2008 executive order by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which directed state agencies to plan for the effects of sea level rise. The government agencies sponsored the study will use it to prepare for coastal erosion and flooding that is expected to threaten homes, businesses, roads, airports and other structures located within a few feet of the high-tide line.

The California Natural Resources Agency said in a statement that the report "confirms the need to take action to address the impacts of rising sea level."

The study shows how unevenly the sea will rise from place to place because of regional factors such as the movement of tectonic plates, climate patterns such as El Ni?o and the effects of melting glaciers and ice sheets in Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica.

For instance, although tide gauges in California show sea levels rising over the last century, levels have been falling north of Cape Mendocino as geological activity pushes up the land. A major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, such as a magnitude 8, could upend that trend, causing parts of the coast to sink and suddenly raising sea levels by 3 feet or more, the report says.

The report is the latest to warn that the rising sea will place coastal communities at increasing risk, with most of the damage caused by a combination of big waves, storm surges and high tides. The warm ocean conditions of a strong El Ni?o can magnify those effects, the report says, expanding sea water and raising sea levels by about a foot for several months.

Coastal California could see serious damage from storms within a few decades, especially in low-lying areas of Southern California and the Bay Area. San Francisco International Airport, for instance, could flood if the sea rises a little more than a foot, a mark expected to be reached in the next few decades. Erosion could cause coastal cliffs to retreat more than 100 feet by 2100, according to the report.

For an idea of what's in store, the report says, look at what happened in the winter of 1983. That's when a series of potent El Ni?o-driven storms hit California's coast, causing more than $200 million in damage from flooding, high waves and erosion. More than 3,000 homes and businesses were damaged and 33 oceanfront homes destroyed.

Although the rise in sea levels will happen gradually, Griggs said, its destructive power will be felt first when storms hit vulnerable places such as Newport Beach and the San Francisco Bay.

"In the short term it's these severe storms in low-lying areas that are most problematic," Griggs said. "So we have to plan for that."

tony.barboza@latimes.com

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Israel court asked for delay on settlement outpost

JERUSALEM ? The Israeli government has asked the Supreme Court to delay the dismantling of an illegal Jewish settlement enclave in the West Bank for seven months.

The government had pledged to evict the two dozen families living in the Givat Assaf settlement outpost by July 1.

The outpost was built without official authorization and was constructed on privately held Palestinian land. Israel considers this illegal, even as it approves construction on other captured territory.

In its petition to the court, the government says it has "significant new information" about Givat Assaf that requires exploring. It did not elaborate.

But the Maariv newspaper reported Sunday that the military has discovered old documents that contradict Palestinian claims to owning the land. The Palestinians want all of the West Bank for their future state.

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LG slips out Optimus L3 DualSim for Russia and Ukraine, keeps you in touch with both Kiev and Kursk

LG's Optimus L3 was always designed with modest ambitions -- mostly of scooping up the starter smartphone crowd -- but a new variant for Russia and the Ukraine has our ears perked. The tiny L3 DualSim includes two SIM slots to let locals hop between two different phone numbers with a switch. Ostensibly it's to give jetsetting businesspeople a way to switch between their home and work phone lines, although the abundance of prepaid service options in the two countries makes us think there's some cost-saving involved as well. The tweaked L3 isn't just another dual-SIM conversion; LG has also seen fit to overcome qualms about performance with an 800MHz Snapdragon replacing the 600MHz of the original. Sadly, we're not seeing any upgrades to the creaky Android 2.3 install or the 3-megapixel camera, so this won't let you get a shrunken L5 on the cheap. At a price of 1,500 Ukranian grivnas (6,169 Russian rubles, or $186) without a contract, however, we suspect many Muscovites and Sevastopolians won't have objections to picking up the L3 DualSim for themselves come the July release.

LG slips out Optimus L3 DualSim for Russia and Ukraine, keeps you in touch with both Kiev and Kursk originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 08:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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