Cloudy monday,10th December....

Sun Dec 9, 3:57 AM ET



SYDNEY, Australia -

Explosions ripped through a fireworks factory in eastern Australia, destroying 20 buildings in the complex and jeopardizing New Year's Eve displays in three state capitals, officials said Sunday.Factory owner Andrew Howard said 20 buildings were razed and 30 others were damaged while plans for New Year's Eve fireworks displays in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide were in doubt.



SHINDURI BEACH, South Korea -

South Korean spill hits seafood industry .Some 2.7 million gallons of crude gushed into the ocean after a collision Friday between a barge and a supertanker carrying more than 260,000 tons of crude oil.The South Korean government declared a "state of disaster" as the oil slick began hitting the shore early Saturday, coming in waves of mucky, stinking crude. The spill now threatens the livelihood of an area that includes beaches like Shinduri and better-known Mallipo, which is considered one of South Korea's most scenic areas and serves as an important stopover for mallards, great crested grebes and others migrating birds.At Mallipo Beach, about a 30-minute drive from Shinduri Beach, raw fish restaurant owner Kim Eung-ku was helping with the cleanup, but said he feared the situation was hopeless.Among those affected by the slick were 181 aquatic farms producing abalone, seaweed, littleneck clams and sea cucumbers, according to Lee Seung-yop, a Taean County official. There are about 4,000 aquatic farmers.





BAGHDAD,Iraq -

Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings.The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior.Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was known for its mixed population and night life. Now, in some areas, red graffiti threatens any woman who wears makeup and appears with her hair uncovered: "Your makeup and your decision to forgo the headscarf will bring you death."Bodies have been found in garbage dumps with bullet holes, decapitated or otherwise mutilated with a sheet of paper nearby saying, "she was killed for adultery," or "she was killed for violating Islamic teachings."



GENEVA -

China continues to evict 13,000 people each month in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, despite worldwide attention and increased scrutiny, a housing rights group said Wednesday. the 2008 Games are held.Beijing says the group is grossly inflating the number of people being relocated as a result of the Olympic preparations, and that residents are content with the compensation they have received.The group — which claimed in June that 1.25 million had already been displaced — said it returned to Beijing in August and found that forced evictions were continuing unabated.In September, the Beijing municipality demolished several buildings in a run-down neighborhood called the "petitioners' village" in Fengtai District, which provided housing for thousands from all over China who came to complain to the central government about land seizures, forced evictions and corruption.



WASHINGTON -

The solar wind, which whips off the sun and blows past Earth and through the solar system, is unleashed by powerful magnetic waves in electrically charged gas around the sun, scientists said on Thursday.The mechanisms that cause the solar wind had baffled scientists for decades, but were revealed in observations by a Japanese satellite called Hinode orbiting Earth, the scientists said in research published in the journal Science.The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged gas -- mostly hydrogen -- blown outward from the sun in all directions at a speed of about a million mph (1.6 million kph).The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged gas -- mostly hydrogen -- blown outward from the sun in all directions at a speed of about a million mph (1.6 million kph).It buffets planetary atmospheres. On Earth, it can disrupt satellites, power grids and communications, under certain circumstances. Earth's magnetic field protects against the solar wind, creating a bubble around which the wind must flow.



Driving the solar wind are so-called Alfven waves -- strong magnetic waves -- that ripple through the plasma of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, transferring energy from the star's surface and into the solar wind, the researchers said.The waves are named after Swedish physicist Hannes Alfven, whose prediction of their existence helped earn him a Nobel prize in physics 1970. He died in 1995.Hinode (pronounced hin-OH-day and named for the Japanese word for "sunrise") showed that two mechanisms appear to power the solar wind, Cirtain said.The first involves the way the sun's magnetic field undergoes rapid changes in its shape, the researchers said. As the magnetic field changes shape, it generates these Alfven waves along its length that accelerate the charged gas and blow it into space, they said.Hinode has three key pieces of equipment -- the largest optical telescope to observe the sun from orbit, an X-ray telescope and an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, making continuous observations of the sun.The existence of the solar wind was first theorized about a half century ago. It existence was confirmed in the 1970s.



BALI, Indonesia -

Slimy, green and unsightly, seaweed and algae are among the humblest of plants.

The conference in Bali is aimed at launching two-year negotiations for a new global warming pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, and a major topic of discussion is the use of Earth's natural resources to remove carbon from the air.While most of the attention to carbon sinks has been on forests, the seaweed scientists say the world should look to the oceans, where some 8 million tons of seaweed and algae are harvested from wild or cultivated sources every year.That solution is a largely Asian one — and it's not without complications. Critics say a challenge will be keeping the carbon, once absorbed, from re-entering the atmosphere. And it's unclear how a vast increase in seaweed production would affect navigation or fisheries.Proponents say seaweed and algae's rapid rate of photosynthesis, the process of turning carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy and oxygen, make it a prime candidate for absorbing carbon out of the environment.Some types of seaweed can grow 9 to 12 feet long in only three months.In addition to storing carbon, seaweed would need to be used to produce clean-burning biofuels, thereby ensuring the carbon dioxide isn't simply recycled back into the air as it would be if the seaweed is eaten.The concept, however, has problems. Skeptics say trees are effective for carbon storage because they live for many years, while seaweed is cultivated and harvested in cycles of only months, meaning the storage will be hard to measure or control.The environmental impact of rapid expansion of seaweed farms has also not been thought out, scientists concede. Huge floating farms could complicate fishing, shipping and other maritime activities.