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Tsunami waves hit Japan after quake A small tsunami has hit Japan after a large earthquake measuring 8.2 in the richter scale occurred near Japan. Little damage has occurred so far however, parts of Asia and Russia are still on alert. Explosion at the U.S. embassy in Athens The U.S. ambassador in Greece, Mr. Charles Ries told the reporters that the attack was "a senseless act of violence". Both the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Public Order of Greece, Dora Bakoyannis and Byron Polidoras, strongly condemned the action.

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Canon Inc. to buy the stake of Toshiba in their joint venture Canon Inc. announced the initiative to start production of new generation flat-panel Television on its own. The sole production will occur after Canon Inc. buys the stake of Toshiba Corp. in their joint venture, SED Inc.

Wikipedia Current Events
A major earthquake measuring approximately 8.2 magnitude occurs in the north-western Pacific Ocean at 04:23:20 UTC. A tsunami is detected and a warning is issued for Russia, Japan, Marcus Island, Wake Island, Midway Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Marshall Islands, Taiwan, Yap, Pohnpei, and Chuuk.

Western New York prepares for ice storm
Western New York is preparing for what some forcasters are saying to be a major ice storm.

The NOAA has issued several warnings for Western New York which begin at 7:00 p.m. [EST] on Saturday and continue into Monday January 15, 2007.

A Winter Weather Advisory has been issued for tonight and Sunday Morning for the "potential of heavy amounts" of ice, sleet and snow and has the potential to become "dangerous." The advisory is set to expire at 8:00 a.m. [EST] on Sunday morning.

"Light freezing rain andfreezing drizzle is expected to begin after midnight tonight and continue into Sunday morning. Precipitation amounts are expected to be very light; however, it does not take much freezing rain to make untreated surfaces slippery," said the advisory on the NOAA's website.

"It [the freezing rain] is not expected to be heavy enough to cause tree or power problems," added the statement.

On Sunday night and Monday, "a wintery mix of precipitation with the potential for heavy amounts is expected Sunday night into Monday. This event has the potential to be much more significant than the precipitation tonight and Sunday morning. Heavy accumulations of snow, sleet or freezing rain are possible, which could lead to significant travel problems and utility outages caused by downed powerlines and poles," said a statement on the NOAA's website.

Although warnings and watches are posted, the NOAA says that the track of the storm is still "uncertain."

"There is still a good deal of uncertainty" as to the track of the storm, "but this storm has the potential to become dangerous," added the statement.

The same storm has caused more than 125,000 people to lose power near St. Louis, Missouri and power officials say that they are "still losing people," said Springfield’s City Utilities spokesman, Ern DeCamp.

At least 6 people have been killed due to the storm around the Midwest and has caused schools and flights from and to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport in Missouri and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas to be cancelled. 25,000 people in Oklahoma are still without power.

An emergency proclamation has been issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California after below freezing temperatures caused "conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property."

Tsunami waves hit Japan after quake
Small tsunami waves hit northern and eastern Japan after a powerful north Pacific earthquake prompted tsunami warnings across northern and eastern Japan and Russia, as well as Alaska.

Tsunami watches were also issued for parts of the Pacific, a region which is still very nervous about tsunami's two years after a deadly wave off Aceh in Indonesia killed more than 230,000 people and made even more homeless. The watches sent out included Taiwan, Philippines, the Guam and Hawaii.

A 40 cm wave was reported at Chichijima in the Ogasawara islands, located 1,200 km south of Tokyo, and several smaller waves on Hokkaido and northern Japan, but there were no reports of injuries and little immediate reports of damage.

There were no reports of more significant waves as of 5pm (1900 AUSTRALIAN EDT), but officials warned that larger waves could still arrive and evacuation advisories were issued for tens of thousands of households.

An official in Russia's Emergencies Ministry told Reuters that the threat of a tsunami had passed.

"Half-past eight, nine o' clock Moscow time (1430-1500 AEDT) was the approximate time the threat of a tsunami was due to appear. That time passed, and the threat did not materialise. Everything is normal," the official said.

Japan's Meteorological Agency had said that tsunami as high as a metre could hit parts of Hokkaido and that smaller waves were likely to hit a wide area of Japan's Pacific coastal areas from Hokkaido to Wakayama prefecture in western Japan on Japan's largest main island of Honshu.

Hokkaido officials urged residents to move to higher ground, and fire trucks made the rounds of coastal areas warning about the possibility of a tsunami. There was only moderate shaking in Hokkaido and no immediate reports of injury due to the quake.

"We have cars going around the city telling people to evacuate," said Takahiro Yamamoto, an official with the Monbetsu city government, told NHK.

Television footage showed one worried resident of Kushiro studying the coastline with binoculars from an evacuation centre.

"I'm scared to return home," one woman, cradling a child, told the NHK.

An official in the Philippines said they had issued a tsunami alert "level one", which warned residents on the northern and eastern coastlines to wait for further information and possible evacuation.

Officials in Taiwan, also included in the Pacific-wide tsunami watch, said they would continue to monitor for several hours but that they did not expect anything to happen.

A tsunami, Japanese for "harbour wave," travels at dizzying speed in the open ocean and, when it approaches shallow water along a coast, slows and swells. In an inlet, it can rise to a towering height very quickly.

In 1993, a tsunami caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed about 200 people on the island of Okushiri, off Hokkaido's southwestern coast.

Japanese court plans to seize control of 2channel
2channel, the largest Internet forum in the world and an ISP in Japan, has been shuttered by a Japanese court ruling in a civil slander case. The corporation managing 2channel was declared bankrupt and its assets will be seized. The ISP will close on January 15th, and the future of the famous "mega-BBS" is uncertain.

2channel's operator, Hiroyuki Nishimura, was sued in 2006 by an unnamed 35-year-old office worker who had been made fun of and insulted on one of 2channel's forums. Nishimura moved his operations outside of Japan but did not contest the judge, who awarded the anonymous office worker 5 million yen, to be taken from 2channel's meager holdings within the country, such as its ISP "2channel Provider."

Nishimura issued no official response, but the splash page of 2ch, traditionally featuring a Japanese vase, was given an sarcastic "notice" telling readers that the vase was being repossessed by the Akabane District Court.

2channel was founded in 1999 and currently receives over 2.7 million posts per day from millions of users, mostly in Japan. 2channel is hosted in California but the domain name is registered in Japan.

Mine collapses in West Virginia; 2 reported dead
At least 2 coal miners in Cucumber, West Virginia were killed inside a mine, underground, after the roof collapsed when a pillar fell over. The collapse happened approximately 1.5 miles away from the entrance to the mine and it is not know what caused the pillar to fall.

"There's no need for rescue teams, the individuals have been recovered," said Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training director, Ron Wooten.

The mine is called the Brooks Run Mine and owned by Alpha Natural Resources LLC. The mine is located in McDowell County, in the southern part of the state.

A call to 911 was placed at approximately 11:00 a.m. [EST].

Officials say that an investigation is being conducted.

Bloggers cite rumors of "secret war" with Iran and Syria
Rumors are circulating in the United States capital of Washington that President Bush has declared a "secret, informal war" on Iran and Syria, according to a pair of blogs written by apparent Washington insiders.

"Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran," blogger and think-tank fellow Steven Clemons wrote on Thursday his site, The Washington Note. The Plank, hosted by the New Republic Magazine, posted an entry on Friday about similar speculation around the capital U.S. city.

Both blogs cited questions asked by Senator Joseph Biden to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a congressional hearing on Thursday. The hearing was a planned follow-up by the administration to answer concerns raised by President Bush's address to the nation on Wednesday where he announced the commitment to send more troops to Iraq. Biden asked several questions about whether the president had plans to send troops across the borders of Iran and Syria.

"Does that mean the president has plans to cross the Syrian and/or Iranian border to pursue those persons or individuals or governments providing that help?" Biden asked.

In an extensive answer, the secretary did not seem to explicitly deny it: "...What we're really trying to do here which is to protect our forces and that we are doing that by seeking out these networks that we know are operating in Iraq. We are doing it through intelligence. We are then able, as we did on the 21st of December, to go after these groups where we find them. In that case, we then asked the Iraqi government to declare them persona non grata and expel them from the country because they were holding diplomatic passports."

She soon added: "...We do need to work with our allies to make certain that they have the defense capacity that they need against growing Iranian military build-up, that they fell that we are going to be a presence in the Persian Gulf region as we have been, and that we establish confidence with the states with which we have long alliances, that we will help defend their interests. And that's what the president had in mind."

The Plank was quick to note that the "secret war" was, at this point, just a rumor. Later that day, The New York Times published a report on an interview conducted in Condoleezza Rice's office Friday afternoon, before she left for a trip to the Middle East. "There has been a decision to go after these networks," she said, referring to President Bush. The U.S. military was authorized by the president to take action against Iranian operatives in Iraq months ago.

In the same report, the New York Times quoted the new secretary of defense Robert M. Gates as saying, "We believe that we can interrupt these networks that are providing support, through actions inside the territory of Iraq, that there is no need to attack targets in Iran itself."

Though he is Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces, the president does not have the constitutional authority to declare war (only the Congress does). The president, however, can order military strikes without declaring war.

The U.S. has long been exploring possible attacks on Iran, even planning covert actions in the country, according to the New Yorker magazine. But speculation has gone wild since Bush's midweek speech in which he announced 21,500 more soldiers would be headed to Iraq. In the same speech, he warned Iran and Syria against their involvement in the Iraq conflict.

Hours after the speech, U.S. forces raided an Iranian office in the Kurdish area of Iraq, detaining several Iranian officials.

Today in History
1301 - The Árpád dynasty in Hungary ended with the death of King Andrew III.

1639 - The Fundamental Orders, the first written constitution that created a government, was adopted in Connecticut.

1900 - Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.

1972 - Queen Margrethe II of Denmark ascended to the throne under a new act of succession.

2004 - The national flag of Georgia, the so-called Five Cross Flag, was restored to official use after a hiatus of some 500 years.

Quote of the Day

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
~ Robert Anton Wilson

Word of the Day

gloaming; n

Twilight, especially at early evening.

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