Japan's first trade deficit since 1980 raises debt doubts (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan first annual trade deficit in more than 30 years calls into question how much longer the country can rely on exports to help finance a huge public debt without having to turn to fickle foreign investors.

The aftermath of the March earthquake raised fuel import costs while slowing global growth and the yen's strength hit exports, data released on Wednesday showed, swinging the 2011 trade balance into deficit.

Few analysts expect Japan to immediately run a deficit in the current account, which includes trade and returns on the country's huge portfolio of investments abroad. A steady inflow of profits and capital gains from overseas still outweighs the trade deficit.

But the trade figures underscore a broader trend of Japan's declining global competitive edge and a rapidly ageing population, compounding the immediate problem of increased reliance on fuel imports due to the loss of nuclear power.

Only four of the country's 54 nuclear power reactors are running due to public safety fears following the March disaster.

"What it means is that the time when Japan runs out of savings -- 'Sayonara net creditor country' -- that point is coming closer," said Jesper Koll, head of equities research at JPMorgan in Japan.

"It means Japan becomes dependent on global savings to fund its deficit and either the currency weakens or interest rates rise."

That prospect could give added impetus to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's push to double Japan's 5 percent sales tax in two stages by October 2015 to fund the bulging social security costs of a fast-ageing society.

The biggest opposition party, although agreeing with the need for a higher levy, is threatening to block legislation in parliament's upper house in hopes of forcing a general election.

Japan logged a trade deficit of 2.49 trillion yen ($32 billion) for 2011, Ministry of Finance data showed, the first annual deficit since 1980, after the economy was hit by the shock of rising oil prices.

Were Japan to run a current account deficit, it would spell trouble because it would mean the country cannot finance its huge public debt -- already twice the size of its $5 trillion economy -- without overseas funds.

Japanese investors currently hold about 95 percent of Japan's government bonds, which lends some stability to an otherwise unsustainable debt burden.

Domestic buyers are less likely to dump debt at the first whiff of economic trouble, unlike foreign investors, as Europe's debt crisis has shown.

The trade data helped send the yen to a one-month low against the dollar and the euro on Wednesday.

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Graphic on 2011 trade data http://link.reuters.com/mev26s

Dec trade balance http://link.reuters.com/vyq65s

Exports by destination http://link.reuters.com/far65s

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"HOLLOWING OUT," AGEING POPULATION

Total exports shrank 2.7 percent last year while imports surged 12.0 percent, reflecting reduced earnings from goods and services and higher spending on crude and fuel oil. Annual imports of liquefied natural gas hit a record high.

In a sign of the continuing pain from slowing global growth, exports fell 8.0 percent in December from a year earlier, roughly matching a median market forecast for a 7.9 percent drop, due partly to weak shipments of electronics parts.

Imports rose 8.1 percent in December from a year earlier, in line with a 8.0 percent annual gain expected, bringing the trade balance to a deficit of 205.1 billion yen, against 139.7 billion yen expected. It marked the third straight month of deficits.

Japan managed to sustain annual trade surpluses through the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the post-Lehman Brothers global recession that started in late 2008, which makes the 2011 dip into deficit all the more dramatic.

A generation ago, Japan was the world's export juggernaut, churning out a stream of innovative products from the likes of Sony and Toyota.

Much like China today, Japan's bulging trade surplus became a source of friction with the United States and other advanced economies, who pressed Tokyo to allow the yen to rise more rapidly in order to reduce the imbalance.

A 1985 agreement between Japan, the United States and Europe's big economies -- known as the Plaza Accord after the New York hotel where it was signed -- pushed the yen higher against the U.S. dollar.

Many economists argue that sowed the seeds of Japan's current debt woes. After the Plaza Accord, Japan's economy weakened and its central bank slashed interest rates, which contributed to a credit boom that eventually spawned a financial crisis and led to two decades of economic stagnation.

Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said on Tuesday he did not expect trade deficits to become a pattern, and did not foresee the country's current account balance tipping into the red in the near future.

But Japan's days of logging huge trade surpluses may be over as it relies more on fuel imports and manufacturers move production offshore to cope with rising costs and a strong yen, a trend that may weaken the Japanese currency longer term.

A fast-ageing population also means a growing number of elderly Japanese will be running down their savings.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the government wants to closely watch the trend of exports and imports.

"There are worries that the yen's strength is driving Japanese industry to go abroad," said Fujimura. "We have to create new industries ... implement comprehensive steps to boost growth. It is important to secure employment within the nation."

($1=77.71 yen)

(Additional writing by Leika Kihara; Editing by Linda Sieg and Emily Kaiser)

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Strong storms hit Alabama, kill two (Reuters)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) – Search and rescue team combed through debris in Alabama after powerful thunderstorms pummeled the state early on Monday, killing at least two people and leaving heavy damage just hours after tornadoes struck portions of Arkansas.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley declared a state of emergency after the predawn storms hit the Birmingham area, with the towns of Center Point and Trussville just to the northeast of the city hit particularly hard.

Two people were confirmed dead, according to Pat Curry, Jefferson County's chief deputy coroner; one in Clay, a city of roughly 10,000 people, and another in the western part of the county.

Earlier, an emergency management official had reported three deaths.

"We have major, major damage," said Bob Ammons, a Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) official, referring to Center Point, Trussville and some unincorporated areas of the county.

About 100 people were treated for injuries, said Jefferson County EMA spokesman Mark Kelly.

Last April, massive tornadoes tore through Alabama killing more than 240 people, including 64 in the Jefferson and Tuscaloosa areas.

On Monday, in St. Clair County, Alabama, spokeswoman Katie Reese said a local fire department estimated some 36 homes had been damaged, and some of them destroyed.

The possibility for sporadic thunderstorms in the region lingered, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Henry Margusity, but overall the severe weather was calming down.

THOUSANDS WITHOUT POWER

Clean-up and recovery efforts were under way across Alabama on Monday afternoon.

Food safety inspectors had been dispatched to assess damage and power outages at retail food establishments, state officials said, adding that any compromised products would be taken off shelves.

Search and rescue efforts were ongoing, according to Matt Angelo of the Center Point fire department. The injury count in that area northeast of Birmingham remained at about 12, he said.

At nearby Parkway Veterinary Clinic animals were being transported to a safe location after the structure sustained a direct hit during the storm, a spokeswoman said.

Earlier, rescue crews were dispatched to investigate reports of an overturned mobile home with people trapped inside, said Debbie Orange, city clerk for the city of Clanton, about midway between Birmingham and Montgomery. No injuries could be confirmed.

A preliminary report from the weather service's storm prediction center indicated a radio station in Clanton, Alabama was destroyed and a 302-foot (92-meter) transmission tower "toppled" due to the severe weather.

A tornado is suspected, but not yet confirmed, in the radio station destruction, according to the National Weather Service.

In Tennessee, the worst storm damage was in the middle of the state, with downed trees and power lines. In western Tennessee, structural damage resulted from winds whipping up to 65 mph, meteorologists said.

These were the latest in a series of powerful January storms to have torn through the Southeast.

On Sunday, twisters downed trees and powerlines in Arkansas leaving thousands without power.

A tornado ripped into an area outside of Fordyce, some 70 miles south of state capital Little Rock, damaging houses and felling trees and power lines as it moved, according to Accuweather.com.

The National Weather Service in Little Rock rated the Fordyce area tornado as an EF2, on a scale that ranges from EF0 to EF5, the most severe. The town of just under 5,000 people was one of the hardest hit areas in a series of storms that struck Arkansas on Sunday night.

Significant damage occurred to houses northwest of the small town, the city's country club and a set of transmission towers, it said in a statement.

The weather service has reported as many as eight possible tornadoes may have touched down on Sunday night in Arkansas, which was pelted by soft-ball sized hailstones and buffeted by winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour.

By Monday, almost 8,000 customers across Arkansas were still without power, according to utility provider Entergy Arkansas, Inc.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Suzi Parker in Little Rock and Kelli Dugan in Mobile, Alabama; Writing by Dan Burns and Lauren Keiper; Editing by Greg McCune and Sandra Maler)

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Sun hurls strong geomagnetic storm toward Earth (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The strongest geomagnetic storm in more than six years was forecast to hit Earth's magnetic field on Tuesday, and it could affect airline routes, power grids and satellites, the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center said.

A coronal mass ejection - a big chunk of the Sun's atmosphere - was hurled toward Earth on Sunday, driving energized solar particles at about 5 million miles an hour (2,000 km per second), about five times faster than solar particles normally travel, the center's Terry Onsager said.

"When it hits us, it's like a big battering ram that pushes into Earth's magnetic field," Onsager said from Boulder, Colorado. "That energy causes Earth's magnetic field to fluctuate."

This energy can interfere with high frequency radio communications used by airlines to navigate close to the North Pole in flights between North America, Europe and Asia, so some routes may need to be shifted, Onsager said.

It could also affect power grids and satellite operations, the center said in a statement. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station may be advised to shield themselves in specific parts of the spacecraft to avoid a heightened dose of solar radiation, Onsager said.

The space weather center said the geomagnetic storm's intensity would probably be moderate or strong, levels two and three on a five-level scale, five being the most extreme.

(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Storms kill at least two in Alabama (Reuters)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) – Search and rescue team combed through debris in Alabama after powerful thunderstorms pummeled the state early Monday, killing at least two people and leaving heavy damage just hours after tornadoes struck portions of Arkansas.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley declared a state of emergency after the predawn storms struck the Birmingham area, with the towns of Center Point and Trussville just to the northeast of the city hit particularly hard.

Two people were confirmed dead, according to Pat Curry, Jefferson County's chief deputy coroner, one in Clay, a city of roughly 10,000 people, and another in the western part of the county.

Earlier, an emergency management official had reported three deaths.

"We have major, major damage," said Bob Ammons, a Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency official, referring to Center Point, Trussville and some unincorporated areas of the county.

About 100 people were treated for injuries, said Jefferson County EMA spokesman Mark Kelly.

Last April, massive tornadoes tore through Alabama killing more than 240 people including 64 fatalities in the Jefferson and Tuscaloosa areas.

On Monday, in St. Clair County, Alabama, spokeswoman Katie Reese said a local fire department estimated some 36 homes were damaged, and some of them were destroyed.

The possibility for sporadic thunderstorms in the region lingered, according to AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist Henry Margusity, but overall the severe weather was calming down.

Clean-up and recovery efforts were under way across Alabama Monday afternoon.

Food safety inspectors had been dispatched to assess damage and power outages at retail food establishments, state officials said, adding that any compromised products would be taken off shelves.

Search and rescue efforts were ongoing, according to Matt Angelo of the Center Point fire department. The injury count in that area northeast of Birmingham remained at about 12, he said.

At nearby Parkway Veterinary Clinic animals were being transported to a safe location after the structure sustained a direct hit during the storm, a spokeswoman said.

Earlier, rescue crews were dispatched to investigate reports of an overturned mobile home with people trapped inside, said Debbie Orange, city clerk for the city of Clanton, about midway between Birmingham and Montgomery. No injuries could be confirmed.

A preliminary report from the weather service's storm prediction center indicated a radio station in Clanton, Alabama was destroyed and a 302-foot transmission tower "toppled" due to the severe weather.

A tornado is suspected, but not yet confirmed, in the radio station destruction, according to the National Weather Service.

In Tennessee, the worst storm damage was in the middle of the state, with downed trees and power lines. In western Tennessee, structural damage resulted from winds whipping up to 65 miles per hour, meteorologists said.

These were the latest in a series of powerful January storms to have torn through the Southeast.

On Sunday, twisters downed trees and powerlines in Arkansas leaving thousands without power.

A tornado ripped into an area outside of Fordyce, some 70 miles south of state capital Little Rock, damaging houses and felling trees and power lines as it moved, according to Accuweather.com.

The National Weather Service in Little Rock rated the Fordyce area tornado as an EF2, on a scale that ranges from EF0 to EF5, the most severe. The town of just under 5,000 people was one of the hardest hit areas in a series of storms that struck Arkansas Sunday night.

Significant damage occurred to houses northwest of the small town, the city's country club and a set of transmission towers, it said in a statement.

The weather service has reported as many as eight possible tornadoes may have touched down Sunday night in Arkansas, which was pelted by soft-ball sized hailstones and buffeted by winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour.

By Monday, less than 8,000 customers across Arkansas were still without power, according to utility provider Entergy Arkansas, Inc.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Suzi Parker in Little Rock and Kelli Dugan in Mobile, Alabama; Writing by Dan Burns and Lauren Keiper; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Greg McCune)

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Hope fades for four missing at Mount Rainier, Park Service says (Reuters)

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Chances are slim of finding four people alive who have been missing since last week on Mount Rainier in Washington state as rescue efforts were suspended on Tuesday due to a snow storm that hit the region, a Park Service official said.

The suspension of the search came a day after officials, taking advantage of a break between winter storms, conducted a major operation to look for the missing people.

An Army Chinook helicopter, a private helicopter and a Washington State Patrol plane with infrared capabilities were used in the latest unsuccessful search, along with seven ground teams, the U.S. National Park Service said in a statement.

But on Tuesday, a winter storm brought more snowfall to Mount Rainier, 50 miles southeast of Seattle, hindering further rescue efforts. Heavy snow blanketed Mount Rainier last week during an unusually strong winter storm that virtually paralyzed nearby Seattle.

The four missing people were in two separate parties. Mark Vucich, 37, of San Diego and Michelle Trojanowski, 30, of Atlanta had been planning to camp at Muir Snowfield at the mountain, the Park Service said. They had said they would exit the park on Sunday, January 15.

The second party consisted of two 52-year-old climbers. Sork Yang of Springfield, Oregon, and Seol Hee Jin of South Korea, were trying to reach the mountain's summit and planned to return on Monday, January 16, the Park Service said.

Patti Wold, a spokeswoman for the Park Service, said on Tuesday that the chances of finding the four people alive were "very minimal, minimum to none."

"We're not searching today," Wold said. "We are scaling back the operation."

The families of the four missing people have been told that the chances of finding them alive were small, she added.

(Reporting by Laura L. Myers: Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Analysis: Durban deal may do little to cool heating planet (Reuters)

DURBAN (Reuters) – The world is forecast to grow hotter, sea levels to rise, intense weather to wreak even more destruction and the new deal struck by governments in Durban to cut greenhouse gas emissions will do little to lessen that damage.

Climate data from U.N. agencies indicates that the accumulation of heat-trapping gases will rise to such levels over the next eight years - before the newly agreed regime of cuts in emissions is supposed to be in place - that the planet is on a collision course with permanent environmental change.

Countries around the globe agreed on Sunday to forge a new deal forcing all the biggest polluters for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But critics said the plan was too timid to slow global warming.

For a reduction plan to have a major impact, analysts say, the world's largest emitter, China, needs to be weaned from coal-intensive power sources that are choking the planet with carbon dioxide (CO2) and developed countries must spend heavily to change the mix of sources from which they draw their energy.

But they see little political will to implement these costly plans and argue that the U.N. process showed, in two weeks of talks in the South African city of Durban, that it is bloated, broken and largely incapable of effecting sweeping change.

"The challenge is that we begin the talks from the lowest common denominator of every party's aspirations," said Jennifer Haverkamp, director of the international climate program for Environmental Defense Fund, a U.S. group which campaigns against pollution.

"For this effort to be successful, countries need to be ambitious in their commitments and to refuse to use these negotiations as just another stalling tool," she said.

Domestic political constraints make it unlikely that pledges in Durban for more green projects in the developed world and stepped up aid for developing countries will come to fruition given problems for government funding in Europe, the United States and Japan.

PROTOCOL ON LIFE SUPPORT

In about 20 years of negotiations, the U.N. process has produced one binding deal on emissions cuts, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It is seen as a fading accord affecting a handful of developed states that now account for only 25 percent of global emissions, and was kept on life-support by the Durban deal.

The latest agreement extends limits on advanced countries that would otherwise expire next year. But it is widely seen as not doing nearly enough to make a dent in emissions.

The pact, known as the "Durban Platform," produced the promise of a new legally binding deal by 2020 and set out a road map to get there. The worry is that by the time any new provisions take effect, they will have been diluted in negotiation to the point of being meaningless, analysts said.

China, the United States and India, the world's three biggest emitters accounting now for about half of all global CO2 emissions, are not bound by Kyoto and would not be bound to any legally enforceable numbers until at least 2020.

The three have been accused by environmental lobby groups for years of blocking tough measures, and all three cite domestic priorities in their defense. The U.S. Senate needs a supermajority to approve global treaties and does not have a broad enough coalition to sign off on a global climate deal.

India and China said curbing their emissions would hurt their fast-growing economies and put hundreds of millions of their people at risk as they try to escape poverty.

RISK OF PERMANENT DAMAGE

But those calling for tighter curbs on emissions say that those populations are being put at greater risk by climate change: "The people of the world are the biggest losers because the governments are kowtowing more to the corporate interests than the interests of the people for more aggressive action," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Myer, a veteran of the U.N. climate talks, called for greater ambition on emissions cuts and financial support for industrial change and for "a more collaborative spirit than we saw in the Durban conference centre these past two weeks."

National envoys to the U.N. climate process and scientists who brief them see a need to limit the global average temperature rise to at least 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times to prevent the most serious climate change. Environmental groups have said even that is not enough.

The United Nations Environment Programme said in a report last month that emissions were on track to grow above what is needed to limit global warming to the 2-degree mark, with analysts warning that delays in cuts for developed states and curbing the furious pace of emissions growth in major developing countries increasingly put the planet at risk.

Myer said: "We are on a path to 3-3.5 degree Celsius increase if we don't make aggressive cuts by 2020.

"And there is nothing to suggest this deal will alter that."

As temperatures rise, so does the damage, which includes crop failures, increasing ocean acidity that would wipe out species and rising sea levels that will erase island states, U.N. reports said.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees by the end of the century if governments failed to contain emissions, bringing permanent destruction to ecosystems.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world's largest disaster relief network, saw the Durban deal as a collective failure to stem the destruction caused by climate change on the world's most vulnerable people.

"It is frankly unacceptable we cannot all agree when so many lives are at stake," Bekele Geleta, the group's secretary general said in a statement.

Selwin Hart, chief negotiator for an alliance of small island states, took some heart, however, that at least there was agreement to keep on talking: "I would have wanted to get more, but at least we have something to work with," he said.

"All is not lost yet."

(Additional reporting by Nina Chestney, Barbara Lewis and Agnieszka Flak in Durban; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Japan says stricken nuclear power plant in cold shutdown (Reuters)

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Shinichi Saoshiro Kiyoshi Takenaka And Shinichi Saoshiro – Fri Dec 16, 7:59 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan declared its tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant to be in cold shutdown on Friday, taking a major step to resolving the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years but some critics questioned whether the plant was really under control.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked on March 11 by a huge earthquake and a towering tsunami which knocked out its cooling systems, triggering meltdowns, radiation leaks and mass evacuations.

In making the much-anticipated announcement, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda tried to draw a line under the most acute phase of the crisis and highlighted the next challenges: the clean-up and the safe dismantling of the plant, something the government says may take more than 30 years.

"The reactors have reached a state of cold shutdown," Noda told a government nuclear emergency response meeting.

"A stable condition has been achieved," he added, noting radiation levels at the boundary of the plant could now be kept at low levels, even in the event of "unforeseeable incidents."

A cold shutdown is when water used to cool nuclear fuel rods remains below boiling point, preventing the fuel from reheating. One of the chief aims of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), had been to bring the reactors to that state by the year-end.

The declaration of a cold shutdown could have repercussions well beyond the plant. It is a government pre-condition for allowing about 80,000 residents evacuated from within a 20 km (12 mile) radius of the plant to go home.

Both Noda and his environment and nuclear crisis minister Goshi Hosono said that while the government still faced huge challenges, the situation at the plant was under control.

That provoked an angry response from senior local officials, Greenpeace and some reporters even as the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear agency welcomed "significant progress" at the plant.

"We hope that this will be a fresh step towards going back home but it does not change the fact that the path to bringing the crisis under control is long and tough," Fukushima governor Yuhei Sato said, according to the Asahi newspaper website.

Greenpeace dismissed the announcement as a publicity stunt.

"By triumphantly declaring a cold shutdown, the Japanese authorities are clearly anxious to give the impression that the crisis has come to an end, which is clearly not the case," Greenpeace Japan said in a statement.

Hosono acknowledged that there were some areas where it would be difficult to bring people back and said there could be small difficulties here and there, but he told a briefing: "I believe there will be absolutely no situation in which problems escalate and nearby residents are forced to evacuate."

The water temperature in all three of the affected reactors fell below boiling point by September, but Tepco had said it would declare a state of cold shutdown only once it was satisfied that the temperatures and the amount of radiation emitted from the plant remained stable.

Jonathan Cobb, an expert at the British-based World Nuclear Association, said the authorities had been conservative in choosing the timing of the announcement.

"The government has delayed declaration of cold shutdown conditions, one reason being to ensure that the situation at the plant was stable," Cobb said, adding that the evacuation zone should get progressively smaller as more of it was decontaminated.

Kazuhiko Kudo, professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University, said authorities needed to determine exactly the status of melted fuel inside the reactors and stabilize a makeshift cooling system, which handles the tens of thousands of tons of contaminated water accumulated on-site.

HUGE COSTS, ANXIETY

The government and Tepco will aim to begin removing the undamaged nuclear rods from the plant's spent fuel pools next year. However, retrieval of fuel that melted down in their reactors may not begin for another decade.

The enormous cost of the cleanup and compensating the victims has drained Tepco financially. The government may inject about $13 billion into the company as early as next summer in a de facto nationalization, sources told Reuters last week.

An official advisory panel estimates Tepco may have to pay about 4.5 trillion yen ($57 billion) in compensation in the first two years after the nuclear crisis, and that it will cost 1.15 trillion yen to decommission the plant, though some experts put it at 4 trillion yen ($51 billion) or even more.

Japan also faces a massive cleanup task outside the east coast plant if residents are to be allowed to go home. The Environment Ministry says about 2,400 square km (930 square miles) of land around the plant may need to be decontaminated, an area roughly the size of Luxembourg.

The crisis shook the public's faith in nuclear energy and Japan is now reviewing an earlier plan to raise the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear power to 50 percent by 2030 from 30 percent in 2010.

Japan may not immediately walk away from nuclear power, but few doubt that nuclear power will play a lesser role in future.

Living in fear of radiation is part of life for residents both near and far from the plant. Cases of excessive radiation in vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water have stoked anxiety despite assurances from public officials that the levels detected are not dangerous.

Chernobyl's experience shows that anxiety is likely to persist for years, with residents living near the former Soviet plant still regularly checking produce for radiation before consuming it 25 years after the disaster.

(Additional reporting by Yoko Kubota, Fredrik Dahl in VIENNA and Nina Chestney in LONDON; Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Robert Birsel)

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Japan's post-tsunami revival plan reaches tipping point (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Nine months after a historic magnitude 9.0 earthquake unleashed a deadly tsunami that wreaked havoc across Japan's northeast, the nation, armed with $155 billion in funding, is entering a critical stage of the rebuilding effort.

Damaged railways and major roads are mostly fixed with at least temporary repairs, two-thirds of ruined ports have been restored and 47,000 households moved from emergency shelters to temporary housing.

Of 22 million tonnes of rubble, two-thirds have been cleaned up, but final disposal remains a dangerous challenge because of concerns about radiation that spewed from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

All the recovery efforts were made possible by initial emergency budgets totaling 6 trillion yen ($77.19 billion).

Now Tokyo and local officials must produce a plan to "build better" to give the region, long beset by a shrinking and ageing population and lack of investment, a chance of revival.

The tsunami-hit area accounts for about 6-7 percent of Japan's economic output, but the stakes are high for the entire nation. Policymakers, investors and companies are counting on the rebuilding effort to give the $5 trillion economy a jolt needed to keep it from sliding back into recession under the weight of a global slowdown and fears of contagion from Europe's debt crisis.

People and businesses, pessimistic about the region's future however, are packing up. More than 38,000 residents left the area between March and August, the biggest exodus since 1969. Of those that remain, 180,000 out of the region's 5.7 million residents have filed jobless claims between March and October, 70 percent more than a year earlier.

"The people who evacuated the area after the disaster won't feel compelled to return unless they can find stable jobs, so reconstruction without job creation would be a failure," said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

"That money will finally flow in is a good news, but it is not a guarantee of a self-sustaining recovery of quake-hit areas."

So far the news is not encouraging. Plans to modernize the struggling fishing industry or move coastal communities to higher ground, a precondition for large-scale rebuilding and investment, have been slow to materialize.

Overwhelmed local bureaucracies, opposition from fishing cooperatives and the need to win the hearts and minds of skeptical residents are getting in the way.

"Unless we can have accords with local people, we cannot proceed with rebuilding projects because there is a possibility of opposition," says a regional official in Miyagi, one of the three prefectures worst hit by the March 11 disaster.

That means it may take months before rebuilding funds start flowing to projects on the ground, local officials say.

OLD BUSINESSES, OLD PEOPLE

The national government is promising five-year tax holidays and light-touch regulation on fishing rights, land use and other issues to those who will invest in special industrial zones in disaster-hit areas. Foreign businesses are also eligible.

Industrial parks focused on automotive parts or medical equipment production as well as renewable energy projects such as wind farms are among ideas proposed by Tokyo.

The process of deciding what to build and where has only just started and only 10 out of 19 municipalities requiring rebuilding in Miyagi prefecture have reconstruction plans ready. In neighboring Iwate, eight out of 12 have such plans.

Reconstruction experts say a shortage of qualified planning professionals is one of the obstacles.

"The fact that many of quake-hit cities and towns are scarcely populated has made it difficult for local officials to create rebuilding plans on their own," said Yoshiyuki Aoki, a senior official of the government's reconstruction office in Tokyo.

He says that, whereas the 1995 Kobe quake hit residential areas constantly under redevelopment, much of the northeast has no recent history of re-zoning and city planning and lacks experts. Tokyo wants to rectify that by sending a team of specialists to help, Aoki says.

Re-establishing the fishing industry is another tough question facing planners.

Cooperatives are defending a system that only loosely ties fishermen with processing firms and retailers, but keeps rivals out and Miyagi governor's initiative to open the business to outsiders got drowned in protests.

Shigeru Tabeta, professor of ocean technology and environment at the University of Tokyo who is assisting with rebuilding of port towns, says preserving the status quo is self-defeating.

Tax breaks and incentives will only work if Japan opens its protected farming and fisheries to foreigners, experts say.

With no magic bullet in sight, spending more on a solid safety net may be the only way to keep communities intact until revitalization plans materialize, says Iwao Sato, sociology of law professor at the University of Tokyo.

His survey of the fishing town of Kamaishi showed more than a third of residents were out of work, compared with a fifth before the quake while the population of self-employed has fallen to 17 percent from 28 percent.

"The government has mostly focused on building seabanks, elevating land levels and other infrastructure development," Sato says. "But more attention is probably needed on supporting the livelihoods of people through direct assistance on employment and homes, or else people will leave."

($1 = 77.7300 Japanese yen)

(Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Matthew Driskill)

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Typhoon kills more than 436 in southern Philippines (Reuters)

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines (Reuters) – More than 400 people were killed and an unknown number were missing after a typhoon struck the southern Philippines, causing flash floods and landslides and driving tens of thousands from their homes.

In a text message to Reuters, Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), said the death toll of 436 was expected to rise.

"Our death toll was based on the actual number of bodies that were brought to funeral homes in the two cities that were the hardest hit by the typhoon," Pang said, adding it was difficult to estimate how many were still unaccounted for.

Typhoon Washi, with winds gusting up to 90 kmh (56 mph), barreled into the resource-rich island of Mindanao late on Friday, bringing heavy rain that also grounded some domestic flights and left wide areas without power.

Emergency workers, soldiers and police were recovering more bodies - most covered in mud - washed ashore in nearby towns.

Pang said nearly 360 bodies had been found in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan and about 50 in four other southern provinces. The government's official death toll stood only at 131 people and nearly 270 missing.

Another 21 people drowned on the central island of Negros, the PNRC said.

Hundreds were also unaccounted for, most of them from a coastal village in Iligan. Houses were swept into the sea by floodwaters while people were sleeping inside late on Friday.

The Philippines social welfare department said about 100,000 people were displaced and brought to nearly three dozen

shelters in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro.

"WE RAN FOR OUR LIVES"

Army spokesman Colonel Leopoldo Galon said search and rescue operations would continue along the shorelines in Misamis Oriental and Lanao del Norte provinces.

"I can't explain how these things happened, entire villages were swept to the sea by flash floods," Galon said.

"I have not seen anything like this before. This could be worse than Ondoy," he said, referring to a 2009 storm that inundated the capital, Manila, killing hundreds of people.

Television pictures showed bodies encased in mud, cars piled on top of each other and wrecked homes. Helicopters and boats searched the sea for survivors and victims.

"We ran for our lives when we heard a loud whistle blow and was followed by a big bang," Michael Mabaylan, 38, a carpenter, told Reuters. He said his wife and five children were all safe.

Aid worker Crislyn Felisilda cited concern about children who had became separated from their families or lost their parents. "Many children are looking for their loved ones... (and children were) crying and staring into space."

Rosal Agacac, a 40-year-old mother, was begging authorities to help find her two children after their shanty was swept to the sea. "Please President Noynoy, help me," she cried, holding a candle at a spot where their house stood before the floods, referring to President Benigno Aquino.

Aquino met with cabinet members and disaster officials to assess conditions on the main southern island and ordered a review of disaster plans to avoid a repeat of the tragedy. He is due to inspect typhoon-hit areas after Christmas.

Rescue boats pulled at least 15 people from the sea, said another army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Cabangbang.

Iligan City Mayor Lawrence Cruz said many people were caught by surprise when water rose one meter (three feet) high in less

than an hour, forcing people onto roofs. "Most of them were already sleeping when floodwaters entered their homes. This is the worst flooding our city has experienced in years."

The national disaster agency said it could not estimate crop and property damage because emergency workers, including soldiers and police officers, were evacuating families and recovering casualties.

Six domestic flights run by Cebu Pacific were cancelled due to the rain and near-zero visibility in the southern and central

Philippines. Ferry services were also halted, stranding hundreds of people.

An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year.

(Writing by Manny Mogato)

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Storm lashes France, cargo ship runs aground (Reuters)

RENNES, France (Reuters) – Storm winds and torrential rain lashed France on Friday, cutting off electricity supplies to hundreds of thousands of homes and sending a cargo ship aground off the northwestern Brittany coast, where it sprang a fuel leak.

There were no reports of injuries as dozens of people were evacuated from flood-prone zones on the western Atlantic coast and 400,000 households were deprived of power, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.

Wind gusts of up to 130 kph pounded France's western coast in the early hours of Friday, causing a cargo ship headed for Malta, the 109-metre TK Bremen, to run aground off Brittany. The crew were rescued by helicopter.

French television showed footage of black fuel washing up on a sandy beach in Brittany, although the damage is expected to be limited because the leak was coming from one compartment in the ship's supply of fuel, police said.

Maritime authorities were planning to deploy equipment to contain a 1-km slick and empty the stricken ship's tanks of around more than 200 tons of fuel.

Early on Friday the storm's heart hung over the northernmost Pas-de-Calais region of France and was headed eastward in the direction of Belgium, according to the latest update from France's national weather service.

(Reporting by Pierre-Henri Allain in Rennes, Patrick Vignal, Gerard Bon and Bertrand Boucey in Paris; writing by Nicholas Vinocur; editing by Brian Love)

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Strong quake hits PNG, no reports of damage (Reuters)

(Reuters) – A strong earthquake struck the Pacific state of Papua New Guinea Wednesday, but no tsunami warning was issued as the quake occurred inland, and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The 7.3 magnitude tremor was centered near Lae, the country's second-largest city, at a depth of around 115 km (71 miles) the U.S. Geological Survey said.

"It was very, very big," said Dolly Kinibo, a receptionist at the Lae International Hotel.

"It lasted for two to three minutes. The whole building moved. The Christmas tree moved, we all moved, people are very shaken. There are no reports of injuries or damage, but our managers are checking."

The quake sent goods flying from the shelves of Lae's Foodmart store but caused only minor damage and no injuries. "It wrecked some displays and caused some damage to the ceiling, but touch wood nothing serious," said store manager Albert Martinez.

Residents in the capital Port Moresby, 223 km (138 miles) from the epicenter, also reported feeling the quake.

PNG, a country where the majority of people live subsistence lives despite its abundant mineral wealth, sits on the geographically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

(Reporting by Michael Perry in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

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New England snow snarls holiday travel, sparks outages (Reuters)

CONWAY, Mass (Reuters) – A wintry storm socked New England states with a mix of heavy snow and freezing rain on Wednesday, sparking power outages and delaying some pre-Thanksgiving flights on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Roughly 17,000 customers from Maine to New York were without electricity by midafternoon after heavy snow toppled trees, limbs and power lines in some places.

Rain eased up in the Mid-Atlantic after downpours overnight, but as much as 10 inches of snow was forecast across the higher elevations of upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine by afternoon, when the storm was expected to end, the National Weather Service said.

" high-impact winter storm will adversely affect holiday travel early this morning and into this afternoon," NWS said in a winter storm warning.

"People should plan their travel accordingly and be prepared to allow plenty of extra time to reach their destination."

By midafternoon, power outages included 9,800 customers in Maine, 3,100 in New Hampshire, 2,800 in Vermont, and roughly 1,000 customers in New York.

In southern Vermont, utility crews scrambled to repair lines knocked out by 8 inches of heavy wet snow, said Central Vermont Public Service spokeswoman Christine Rivers.

In Maine, up to 10 inches of snow was predicted for the mid-state region around Bangor and Orono, with freezing rain expected along the coast. State police urged drivers to go slow as roads turn slippery or to avoid road travel altogether, if possible.

The day before Thanksgiving is a notoriously busy travel day, as friends and families gather to share the annual feast to commemorate the Pilgrims' celebration of the good harvest of 1621.

On the roads, some 38.2 million Americans are expected to drive 50 miles or more away from home between November 23 and 27, up 4 percent from last year and the highest since 2007, said travel group AAA.

Airports were bracing for roughly 23.2 million people expected to fly U.S. carriers' domestic and international routes over the Thanksgiving holiday period, according to industry group ATA.

While there were no major tie-ups at Boston's Logan Airport, numerous planes had slight delays and several flights to New York City and Toronto were canceled, said Massport's Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella.

"Yesterday we handled about 100,000 people and we expect to do the same, or somewhere near there, today," Orlandella said.

New England carrier Cape Air canceled most flights to or from Maine, New Hampshire, New York's Adirondacks region and Vermont due to the bad weather, Orlandella said.

"The heavy snow has avoided major cities in the Northeast - it's been well north, and north of Boston -- but these cities got hit with a lot of rain last night, and locally gusty winds, and that has flights backed up," said Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.

With the storm moving out to sea overnight, strong winds currently buffeting New York City should die down by Thursday morning for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, Sosnowski said.

The parade's huge inflatable balloons typically are grounded when winds exceed a danger threshold of about 34 miles per hour, Sosnowski said.

"There is some 'canyon effect' there in New York City - the air rushes in between the buildings. But tomorrow, winds should average 8 - 15 miles per hour, with gusts to 25," he said.

Amtrak had no storm-related problems with its northeastern train service by midmorning, said spokesman Cliff Cole.

In the Pacific Northwest, a strong storm that pounded the region in prior days had tapered off, but a second one was seen delivering fierce winds to the area on Thanksgiving Day, forecasters said.

The Cascade Mountains, the Coastal Range and the Rockies also may get over a foot of snow in the next two days, the National Weather Service said.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)

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Rare November snowfall dusts Southeast (Reuters)

ATLANTA (Reuters) – A rare November snowfall powdered parts of the U.S. Southeast late Monday and early Tuesday, with as much as eight inches falling on one Arkansas town and some schools closed in Tennessee.

Snowfall extended through the mid-Mississippi and Tennessee valleys and as far south as Haleyville, Alabama, said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

Parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi reported between one and three inches of snow, and more flurries were forecast on Tuesday.

"It was a surprise to see it this early." said Lesley Hobbs, membership director for the Chamber of Commerce in Paragould, Arkansas. "It was really pretty - big flakes."

Paragould, about an hour north of Memphis, got approximately eight inches of snow, Sosnowski told Reuters.

"It's not a once-in-a-100-year event, but it is once every 50 years," he said of the November snowfall. "Some of these areas only get two to three snow days a year."

He said there was little accumulation on roads, which "were pretty warm."

The wintry scene won't last, with the forecast calling for temperatures as high as 60 degrees later in the week in some areas, Sosnowski said.

(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Tennessee; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Greg McCune)

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Northeast to post warmest November in 10 years (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Northeastern United States, the world's largest heating oil market, is set to post its warmest November in a decade, and the mildest for some cities like Boston in over 30 years, forecasters said this week.

The Northeast and East North Central regions, including Chicago, Cleveland and St. Louis, had their warmest November since 2001, Pennsylvania-based forecaster Planalytics said.

Boston was the warmest since 1975, while Indianapolis was the warmest in over 50 years.

Overall, forecasters expect this November to be the fifth-warmest since records began in 1950.

The mild weather was a result of "autumn being autumn" and not a sign of a weakening La Nina weather pattern - expected to continue through winter - or a harbinger of what's to come this winter, according to New York-based Weather 2000 meteorologist Michael Schlacter.

While November's mild weather aided U.S. retailers as shoppers took to the streets, it pressured demand for natural gas to fire furnaces and power plants.

Cash gas prices slid to their lowest levels in more than two years, while gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange slid to 11-month lows.

Heating oil prices, meanwhile, were weaker, but concerns about supply disruptions due to recent refinery closures limited the downside, market sources said.

The Southwest coast was the coolest since 2004, with Los Angeles the coolest since 2000, the forecaster said.

Weather 2000's Schlacter noted that while New York City had a "warm" November, it was not "off the charts" or historic in nature.

"Even just this past decade we've had some tremendous swings in weather in November temperatures. We're not that much warmer than 2009 or 2006. We are going to top those, but we're still in the same ballpark as the last five years," Schlacter said.

Overall this November will fall behind November 2001, and will likely be the fifth-warmest on recent record, Schlacter said. MDA EarthSat meteorologist Rick Groh agreed.

All the forecasters noted that cooler weather in the U.S. West would likely skew the overall national average.

"The tremendous cool in the West will likely dilute the impressiveness of the warmth for the nation as a whole," Schlacter said.

NOVEMBER VERSUS THE WINTER

Forecasters were quick to note that November weather patterns were not necessarily indicative of how the entire winter will turn out.

Forecaster WSI has called for the mildest winter in five years, lowering heating demand expectations.

U.S. government forecasters said a strengthening La Nina would grip the country for a second straight winter, causing colder and wetter weather in the most northern states and drier, warmer conditions throughout the drought-ravaged South.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said it expects the La Nina weather phenomenon that results in cooler ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, to become the most dominant factor influencing weather across the country, but added that a change in pressure called the Arctic Oscillation could make it difficult for forecasters to predict more than a week or two in advance.

The volatile condition could produce dramatic short-term swings in temperatures. Arctic Oscillation can generate strong shifts in the climate patterns that could overwhelm or amplify La Nina's typical impacts, NOAA said.

Weather 2000 was calling for a below-normal period from December through March for the nation as a whole, with the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area the focal points of the coolest weather.

"Last year was very impressive. It's probably not going to be as cold as last year, but could be similar to the 2008-2009 winter for the nation as a whole. The winters the last four years have been in that slightly cool direction and that's where we're leaning this year," Schlacter said.

"Chicago, which had a very, very warm November, just like New York, is already starting this new transition. It's a very slow progress and the Interstate-95 corridor on the East Coast is going to have to wait about six or seven days into December until we catch up with that," he said.

"Everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians are doing a 180 flip starting today or yesterday, compared to what was going on in November, which just shows how quickly things can change," Schlacter added.

MDA EarthSat said the December through February winter period would be normal to slightly above-normal for the Northeast and near to slightly-below normal for the Midwest, above-normal in Texas and below-normal on the West Coast and in the Rockies.

(Editing by Andrea Evans)

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First significant snow of winter to hit central U.S. (Reuters)

AUSTIN, Tex (Reuters) – Up to 12 inches of snow was expected to fall in parts of Colorado and New Mexico on Saturday as a storm system moved through the central U.S., bringing what forecasters said would be the first significant snow of the season to the region.

From New Mexico to the Great Lakes, the storm that brought damaging winds to Western states and several inches of snow to the Rockies on Friday is set to drop four to seven inches of snow in other states in the region, including Nebraska and Kansas, according to forecasters.

Sioux City, Iowa was expecting up to five inches of snow by the end of the day, and police were already reporting more than a dozen car crashes on Saturday afternoon due to the slick roads.

In Omaha, Neb., the first significant snowfall of the season coincided with Saturday's college soccer playoff game featuring the hometown Creighton University and a team from a place where it snows about once every two decades or so: the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The NCAA provided yellow balls for the elite eight matchup but the afternoon game was postponed until noon Sunday to give crews time to clear the field.

The storm was expected to leave as much as 6 inches of snow in eastern Nebraska by Sunday morning.

About four inches of snow on the ground in Pueblo, Colorado on Saturday afternoon did not deter business at Shamrock Brewing Company, where patrons were enjoying a beer in spite of the winter weather, said bartender Heather Ramsey.

"There's almost a rush in business during the snowy days," she said. "It's almost like people want to get out. They don't want to get too far, but they don't stay home."

Residents of the high country in Arizona were on the lookout for snow later Saturday as well, with forecasters predicting up to eight inches in Flagstaff by Saturday night.

The same system was bringing rain to parts of north Texas, as well as parts of Michigan and Iowa.

Temperatures below freezing was causing dangerous driving conditions in Michigan, where rain was freezing on roads, according to Accuweather.com.

The northern Great Lakes can expect snow accumulation on Saturday night, forecasters said.

Travel on several interstate highways is expected to be affected by the wintry mix of snow, sleet and rain, according to Accuweather.com forecasters, including I-25, I-29, I-35, I-39, I-40, I-70, I-80, I-90 and I-94.

The National Weather Service issued an advisory on Saturday warning of potential heavy rain in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas on Saturday night in advance of a cold front expected to hit the area late Saturday or early Sunday.

A second winter storm is expected to develop on Sunday evening in New Mexico, across Texas and into Oklahoma, bringing temperatures down to the 20s for some areas and sparking the potential for snow, sleet or ice.

Also starting Sunday, forecasters will be watching for heavy rains to drench an already saturated area from Arkansas to the Ohio Valley, raising the potential for floods in that area next week, according to Accuweather.com.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

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Storms cause damage, deaths, injuries in South (Reuters)

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) – Severe storms and suspected tornadoes across the South have resulted in structural damage, power outages, injuries and at least six deaths in three states, officials said on Thursday.

Officials confirmed deaths in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia from the extreme weather that swept the region on Wednesday.

A 50-year-old woman and 3-year-old girl died in Davidson County in central North Carolina when an apparent twister destroyed the home they were in, said Major Larry James of Davidson County Emergency Services.

"The house was completely gone," he told Reuters. "The only thing left is the block foundation."

James said 11 other people were injured, and 35 to 50 residences and businesses were damaged.

In a statement, North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue said there also were more than a dozen structures damaged in Randolph County from a reported tornado there.

Severe weather, including a possible tornado, was being blamed for three deaths in a rural area near the town of Rock Hill, South Carolina, said York County Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Mike Baker.

Five people were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening after the Wednesday evening storm, and seven homes were severely damaged or destroyed, Baker said.

"Everyone's been accounted for, but we're continuing to search for personal items," Baker said. "This is very significant damage, and a November tornado, it's an unusual weather occurrence for us."

In suburban Atlanta, a man died Wednesday afternoon when a large pine tree fell on top of the sport utility vehicle he was driving in heavy wind and rain, said Captain Tim House, spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office.

"The driver was trapped and mortally wounded," House said.

COLD FRONT ARRIVES

Conditions were favorable for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes on Wednesday, with a cold front hitting unusually warm air and significant moisture existing at lower levels of the atmosphere, weather experts said.

"Typically we see our severe weather season during the spring months, but we also have a secondary peak in November," said Neil Dixon, meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Greenville/Spartanburg in South Carolina.

"In November, we see strong cold fronts," he said. "These strong cold fronts move along from the western Carolinas, and the strong wind shear moves ahead of that."

A series of deadly tornadoes battered the Southeast in April, killing an estimated 364 people. With the latest deaths, the number of tornado fatalities for 2011 will likely top 550, said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center.

This year already ranks as the deadliest from tornadoes since the National Weather Service began its database in 1950, he said.

"The number of fatalities this year directly due to tornadoes is 100 times greater than the recent decades' annual average," Carbin said.

Preliminary reports indicate at least 25 twisters hit Southern states between Tuesday and Wednesday, Carbin said. Reports came from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas.

On Wednesday, at least 15 people were injured in southern Mississippi as storms passed through Jones County, just north of Laurel. Only one of those was transported to an area hospital for treatment, said Don McKinnon, the county's emergency management director.

The American Red Cross said an initial damage assessment in Alabama indicated about 230 homes were affected by severe weather throughout the state, including 16 homes that were destroyed.

(Additional reporting by Verna Gates in Birmingham, Ala, Kelli Dugan in Mobile, Ala, David Beasley in Atlanta and Harriet McLeod in Charleston, S.C.; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Joplin tornado death toll revised down to 161 (Reuters)

KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) – The death toll from the May 22 tornado in Joplin, Missouri has been revised down to 161 with the discovery that one assumed victim died of other causes.

The city said in a statement that Kenneth J. Henson, a resident of Ottawa County, Oklahoma, did not die in the tornado. Jasper County Coroner Rob Chappel discovered the error while he was helping other officials compile a list of tornado victims for a six-month memorial service, the city said.

"Through this recent review, we are confident that the current list of 161 is accurate," the city said. The city gave no explanation for the Henson mix-up, and Chappel could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.

The tornado, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, destroyed some 900 homes and other buildings. The death toll grew over several months as people died of their lingering injuries.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

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Extreme weather to worsen with climate change: IPCC (Reuters)

KAMPALA (Reuters) – An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, U.N. scientists said on Friday.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change, in a report released in Uganda on Friday.

The report gives differing probabilities for extreme weather events based on future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, but the thrust is that extreme weather is likely to increase.

"It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes ... will occur in the 21st century on the global scale," the IPCC report said.

"It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase," it added.

"A 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions," under one emissions scenario.

An exception is in very high latitudes, it said. Heat waves would likely get hotter by "1 degrees C to 3 degrees C by mid-21st century and by about 2 degrees C to 5 degrees C by late-21st century, depending on region and emissions scenario."

Delegates from nearly 200 countries will meet in South Africa from November 28 for climate talks with the most likely outcome modest steps toward a broader deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change.

CARBON EMISSIONS UP

The United Nations, the International Energy Agency and others say global pledges to curb emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes become more common and food production more difficult.

Global carbon emissions rose by a record amount last year, rebounding on the heels of recession.

"It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of heavy rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe," especially in "high latitudes and tropical regions."

For the IPCC, "likely" means a two-thirds chance or more.

It said there was "medium confidence" that this would lead to "increases in local flooding in some regions", but that this could not be determined for river floods, whose causes are complicated.

The report said tropical cyclones were likely to become less frequent or stay the same, but the ones that do form are expected to be nastier.

"Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming. Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely," the report said.

That, coupled with rising sea levels were a concern for small island states, the report said.

Droughts, perhaps the biggest worry for a world with a surging population to feed, were also expected to worsen.

The global population reached 7 billion last month and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, according to U.N. figures.

"There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century ... due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration," including in "southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil and southern Africa."

There is a high chance that landslides would be triggered by shrinking glaciers and permafrost linked to climate change, it said.

(Writing and additional reporting by Tim Cocks; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Massive storm that tore through Alaska moves into Rockies (Reuters)

(Reuters) – The hurricane-like storm that tore through Alaska earlier this week moved into the Rocky Mountains on Saturday, triggering winter storm and high wind warnings across the region.

Corey Mead, a meteorologist at the National Storm Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the system, which was likened to a Category 3 hurricane when it hit Alaska on Thursday, had weakened as it moved south.

But he said it still remained "fairly strong" and was already causing isolated blizzard-like conditions in some parts of the northern Rockies.

Otherwise, weather conditions across the continental United States were relatively quiet.

The only exception was in the southern high plains, especially eastern New Mexico, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, where Mead said high winds and low humidity were raising the risk of wildfires.

Over the past year, firefighters in Texas have responded to more than 20,000 fires that have burned a record 3.5 million acres, prompting the Texas Forest Service to declare this the worst fire season in the state's history.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher)

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Japan allows partial glimpse inside crippled nuclear plant (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Conditions at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, devastated by a tsunami in March, were slowly improving to the point where a "cold shutdown" would be possible as planned, officials said on Saturday during a tour of the facility.

Officials shepherded a group of about 30 mainly Japanese journalists through the plant for the first time since the meltdown of the plant's reactors, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Cooling systems at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, were knocked out by the powerful tsunami and evidence of the devastation was clear to see.

The nuclear reactor buildings were still surrounded by crumpled trucks, twisted metal fences, and large, dented water tanks. Smaller office buildings around the reactors were left as they were abandoned on March 11, when the tsunami hit.

Cranes filled the skyline in testimony to recovery efforts.

Journalists on the tour mainly stayed on a bus as they were driven around the plant and were not allowed near the reactor buildings. Still, they all had to wear protective suits, double layers of gloves and plastic boot covers and hair nets.

All carried respiration masks and radiation detectors.

"From the data at the plant that I have seen, there is no doubt that the reactors have been stabilized," Masao Yoshida, chief of the Daiichi plant, told the group.

The compound may still be littered with rubble, but Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the utility operating the plant, has succeeded in bringing down the temperatures at the three damaged reactors from levels considered dangerous.

They are confident they will be able to declare a "cold shutdown" -- when temperatures are stable below boiling point -- as scheduled by the end of this year.

While Tepco had managed to stabilize conditions so workers could enter the reactor buildings, Yoshida said there was still danger involved for those working there.

The disaster prompted the government to declare a 20 km (12 miles) no-entry zone around the plant, forcing the evacuation of about 80,000 residents.

A cold shutdown is one of the conditions that must be met before the government considers lifting its entry ban.

As an emergency measure early in the crisis, Tepco tried to cool the damaged reactors by pumping in huge volumes of water, much of it from the sea, only to leave a vast amount of tainted runoff that threatened to leak out into the ocean.

It solved the problem by building a cooling system to clean the radioactive runoff, using some of the water to cool the reactors.

A group of white tents houses the cleaning facility. In front were hoisted the flags of the United States, France and Japan -- the countries that provided the technology for the decontamination system.

"Every time I come back, I feel conditions have improved. This is due to your hard work ," Japan's environment and nuclear crisis minister Goshi Hosono told workers at the plant.

However, Hosono warned it would still take about 30 years to dismantle the reactors after a cold shutdown was achieved.

Workers engaged in the recovery effort are stationed at J-Village, a national soccer training center near Daiichi that has been converted into an operational base.

Tepco says up to 3,300 workers a day arrive from J-Village, located on the edge of the 20 km no-entry zone.

At J-Village, workers on their way to the plant lined up at a white tent to change into protective gear. Every day when they return, the workers discard their protective clothing, which is treated as radioactive waste and stored.

A Tepco guide said every piece of discarded clothing has been kept there since March 17, about 480,000 sets heaped in large piles or put in bed-sized containers and stacked in rows.

(Reporting by a pool reporter representing foreign media in Japan; Writing by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Paul Tait)

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