Atmospheric
conditions are continuing to become more conducive for
strengthening…And all forecast guidance suggests Rita should
intensify some more…Before and after it reaches the Gulf of Mexico.

All indications are that Rita will become a major hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico.

One billion dollars has been plundered
from Iraq’s defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history,
The Independent can reveal, leaving the country’s army to fight a
savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.

The carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot
hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military
support, Iraqi officials say, making it difficult for the US to
withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq, as Washington says it
wishes to do.

Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which
the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only
front men, and “rogue elements” within the US military or intelligence
services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.

Mr Allawi says a further $500m to $600m has allegedly disappeared from
the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries. This helps
to explain why the supply of electricity in Baghdad has been so poor.

In an antiwar song opposing the Iraq
War he wonders what his father (an Air Force general) would have said
about the way “they turned his dream around”, killing babies in Iraq in
the name of freedom.

He referred to the current world situation as “darkened times.”

In a song about the Civil War being
fought by the poor for the rich, and how an Irish immigrant fought for
the North because he saw it as a class war, he joked, “It’s amazing the
pinko shit you can sneak in a bluegrass song.”

Also:

My activism started with opposing the death penalty. I’ll be in D.C. on
the 24th. Because I can’t help but believe that a country that didn’t
have the death penalty wouldn’t have attacked a country that hadn’t
attacked it first.

Hurricanes
of the intensity of Katrina have become almost twice as common over the
past 35 years, according to research suggesting that global warming
could be worsening severe storms.



The overall frequency of tropical
storms worldwide has remained broadly static since 1970, but the number
of extreme Category 4 and 5 events has risen sharply.

The gargantuan
chunks of ice breaking off the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier and thundering
into an Arctic fjord make a spectacular sight. But to Greenlanders that
sight is also deeply worrisome.

The frequency and size of the icefalls are a powerful reminder that the
frozen sheet covering the world’s largest island is thinning — a
glaring sign of global warming, scientists say.

Climate change
researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf
Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from
freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the
sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to
less than a quarter of its former strength.