MANADO, Indonesia – Rising sea levels, warming waters and spiraling acidity caused by global warming are threatening the world’s oceans and the communities they support, governments warned Thursday, as they sought to include protection for the seas in a new U.N. climate treaty.

Not only marine ecosystems, but the lives of tens of millions of people could be affected as they are forced to leave inundated coastal communities and find new jobs, they said.

“We must come to the rescue of the oceans,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the opening of high-level government talks at the World Ocean’s Conference in the northern city of Manado.

“We must preserve them as our legacy for our future generations so that they may live free from the shackles of poverty,” he said.

Scientists have long warned that higher temperatures will melt polar ice and cause sea levels to rise, wiping out island communities and destroying coastal ecosystems. Rising emissions of carbon dioxide are also making oceans increasingly acidic, eroding sea shells, bleaching coral and killing other marine life.

But many questions remain about oceans — which can also play an important part in absorbing carbon — partly because the technology to study them is relatively new.

Participants at Thursday’s meeting want negotiators at U.N. climate change talks, scheduled to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December, to discuss the world’s waters including concerns about the affect of greenhouse gas emissions on oceans when replacing the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in recorded remarks Thursday that the world must “do more to protect our oceans and preserve the long-term health of our planet and its people,” noting that the two are closely linked.

The effects of climate change, she said, “can be seen not only in melting glaciers and dying coral reefs, but also in damaged homes, falling wages, rising poverty, diminished opportunities.”

The two-day meeting in Manado, which brings together ministers and high-level officials from more than 80 countries, was preceded by a series of symposiums on science, technology and policy makers. It wraps up Friday.

A similar gathering will be held next week in Washington, D.C., with the focus on the need for improved marine conservation.

“The fact that less than 1 percent of the world’s oceans are covered by marine protected areas is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Dan Laffoley of the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a statement.

“Just because these places are under water and not highly visible does not mean they should be ignored,” he said. “It’s time to expand marine protected areas and save our oceans from threats like overfishing and climate change.”

UA expert: Emissions feed droughts, which lead to more blazes

The Dude Fire, started by a lightning strike near Payson on June 25, 1990, killed six firefighters.

Man-caused fires play a significant role in global climate change, a University of Arizona researcher said Thursday.

“We found that approximately 20 percent of the warming effect of greenhouse gases is coming from deforestation fires set by people,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, UA professor and director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

“This is more precise than what was previously available,” he said.

That figure includes only deforestation fires, or ones deliberately set to convert forests – often tropical rain forests – into farmlands and pasturelands, he said.

It does not include the wildfires – caused by man or acts of nature – that are seen regularly in the western United States and other areas, Swetnam said.

Large fires have a “feedback effect” that leads to more fires as well as climate change, Swetnam said.

“Warming conditions lead to more droughts, which lead to more fires. The fires release emissions, those go into the atmosphere and increases warming further,” he said. “Fire can actually generate more fire.”

This can include forest fires.

There are increasing numbers of so-called megafires in the western United States, Canada, Siberia and other regions, Swetnam said.

These megafires are at least partially driven by regional and global warming trends, he said.

“In the western United States, we have seen more than a sixfold increase in the total area burned the past two decades compared to the previous two decades,” he said. “Fire season in the western United States has increased by more than two months.”

Deadly fires in Australia are another example of the trend.

“Because of the high levels of industrial pollution that is changing the climate, we are already seeing changes in fire activity on Earth,” said David Bowman of the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

Bowman is a co-author of the paper that appears Friday in Science.

While the study more accurately reflects fire’s impact on climate change, much work remains, Swetnam said.

“In this paper, we make pains to talk about the difficulties and uncertainties that remain,” he said. “This is still a coarse-scale estimate on how much burning by people is contributing to global warming.

“It could be greater. There is potential for it to be considerably larger.”

The paper, “Fire in the Earth System,” calls for more research on the role fire plays in putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, Swetnam said.

“If we want to understand climate change in the future, we need to build fire into the models,” Swetnam said.

“Fire is affecting people and people are affecting fire . . . we need to put fire on the center stage of our understanding,” he said.

Smoke plumes from a 2007 southern California wildfire billow out over the Pacific Ocean. University of Arizona research didn't even take into account wildfires when they found fires account for 20 percent of the warming effects of greenhouse gasses. However, fires breed more fires - including wildfires, the team's research shows.

KABUL – Two earthquakes shook eastern Afghanistan early Friday, killing at least 19 people and destroying dozens of homes, officials said.

The quakes destroyed an estimated 100 houses in two villages in Nangarhar province, said governor’s spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. The provincial police chief, Ghafor Khan, said at least 19 people were killed and 20 injured.

One villager said the death toll was considerably higher. Officials were traveling to the site.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Nangarhar province was hit by two earthquakes — a 5.5 magnitude quake at about 2 a.m., and a 5.1 magnitude aftershock two hours later.

Khan said two villages suffered the most damage — Sargad Kheil and Khodi Kheil, both in Sherzad district, about 50 miles (90 kilometers) east of Kabul.

A villager in Sherzad, Shah Mohammad Khan, told The Associated Press that 40 people were killed and 60 wounded, but government officials did not confirm those figures.

Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountain range is hit by dozens of minor earthquakes each year. Many Afghan homes are made of dried mud, so even moderate earthquakes can cause many deaths and major damage to infrastructure.

Rescuers make their way past piles of rubble in the streets of Onna, near L 'Aquila central Italy, Monday. A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing more than 150 people in the country's deadliest quake in nearly three decades, officials said. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured.

L’AQUILA, Italy – Relatives of the missing watched agonized Tuesday as rescuers dug desperately by hand for survivors of Italy’s devastating earthquake, jarred by a strong aftershock that drove home the continuing danger.

The death toll from Italy’s worst earthquake in three decades jumped to 207 as bodies were recovered and identified.

Lilly Centofanti waited with her mother on the lawn in front of a partially collapsed university dormitory for word of her 19-year-old younger brother, Davide, who lived on the third floor.

Centofanti and her mother comforted each other as relatives called the younger woman’s cell phone for updates.

“There’s no information,” she kept saying.

“We’re waiting,” she told a reporter.”We only know the shocks go on.”

Rescuers pulled two bodies overnight from the rubble of the four-story dormitory. They ran out, appearing confused, when the 4.9-magnitude aftershock hit at 11:26 a.m.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi surveyed the devastated region by helicopter and said the rescue efforts would continue for two more days — after which any of the trapped would have little chance of survival. Fifteeen people were still missing, he said.

“The rescue efforts will continue for another 48 hours from today until it is certain that there is no one else alive,” Berlusconi told reporters.

Berlusconi said that at least 100 of the roughly 1,000 injured people were in serious condition. As many as four students could still be inside the dormitory in L’Aquila — a central Italian city of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architectural treasures, Berlusconi said.

A series of aftershocks have hit of L’Aquila and 26 surrounding towns and cities in the snowcapped Apennine mountains since the quake early Monday, which also left tens of thousands homeless. Tuesday’s aftershock appeared strongest around L’Aquila, a city of some 70,000 people.

Two buildings in Pettino, a suburb of L’Aquila, collapsed following the aftershock, the news agency ANSA reported, citing fire officials. No one was believed to be inside either building.

The ground shook in the nearly leveled town of Onna, about six miles (10 kilometers) away, but caused no panic.

Rescuers were still trying to reach more isolated hamlets on Tuesday.

Officials said some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed, and at least 50,000 people were left homeless. In Onna, 38 people out of some 300 inhabitants were dead, rescue officials said.

While the elderly, children and pregnant women were given priority at tent camps in the area, others were sleeping in cars or making their own arrangements to stay with relatives or in second homes out of the quake zone.

Six months pregnant, Sandra Padil spent the night in a tent without any covers in the chill mountain air as the temperatures dipped to 6 Celsius (43 Fahrenheit).

“We are calmer out in the open,” said Padil, a 32-year-old Peruvian who has been living in L’Aquila since 1996. “We didn’t have blankets and it was cold, but at least this morning they gave us breakfast. Let’s hope this ends quickly.”

Some elderly people appeared to be disoriented as they walked among the tents, and people tending them complained about the lack of blankets.

Mounting piles of rubble contained evidence of shattered lives: torn clothing, ripped stuffed animals and broken furniture.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the main quake — which struck just after 3:30 a.m. Monday as most people slept — was magnitude 6.3 on the so-called “moment scale,” but Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics, using the Richter scale, put it at 5.8.

Rescue workers arrived from throughout Italy, from as far away as Venice and Genoa. Part of L’Aquila’s main hospital was evacuated for fear of collapse, and few operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open.

Law enforcement placed cordons around the areas hardest hit by the quake to prevent looting, including the center of L’Aquila and the towns of Paganica and Onna, Capt. Ivan Centomani of Italy’s financial police told Sky Italia TV from L’Aquila.

Italy’s national police chief, Antonio Manganelli, said several people had been arrested for looting from abandoned houses.

The quake took a severe toll on L’Aquila’s prized architectural heritage. Many Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance landmarks were damaged, including part of the red-and-white stone basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio.

The bell tower of the 16th-century San Bernardino church and the cupola of the Baroque Sant’Agostino church also fell, the Culture Ministry said. Stones tumbled down from the city’s cathedral, which was rebuilt after a 1703 earthquake.

Damage to monuments was reported as far away as Rome, where cracks appeared at the thermal baths built in the 3rd century by the emperor Caracalla, Culture Ministry official Giuseppe Proietti said.

Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up millions in euros to deal with the disaster, and canceled a visit to Russia so he could deal with the crisis.

Condolences poured in from around the world, including from President Barack Obama, Pope Benedict XVI and Abdullah Gul, president of quake-prone Turkey.

It was Italy’s deadliest quake since Nov. 23, 1980, when a 6.9-magnitude quake hit southern regions, leveling villages and causing some 3,000 deaths.

The last major quake to hit central Italy was a 5.4-magnitude temblor that struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, of which 27 were children who died when their school collapsed.

A man wrapped in a blanket holds a religious photo in L'Aquila, central Italy, on Monday.

Rescuers with a sniffer dog search for survivors among the rubble of collapsed buildings on Monday in the village of Castelnuovo, central Italy.

WASHINGTON – The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before.

Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

“We’re not set up well for summertime,” ice data center scientist Walt Meier said Monday. “We’re in a very precarious situation.”

Young sea ice in the Arctic often melts in the spring and summer. If it survives for two years, then it becomes the type of thick sea ice that is key. But the past two years were warm, and there’s more young, thin ice at the top of the world.

In normal winters, thick sea ice — often about 10 feet thick or more — extends from the northern boundaries of Greenland and Canada almost to Russia. This year, the thick ice cap barely penetrates the bull’s-eye of the Arctic Circle.

The amount of thick sea ice hit a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year, Meier said. The amount of older sea ice that was lost is larger than the state of Texas.

“That thick ice really traps ocean heat; it keeps the planet in its current state of balance,” said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado and NASA’s former chief ice scientist. “When we start to diminish that, the state of balance is likely to change, tip one way or another.”

Sea ice is important because it reflects sunlight away from Earth. The more it melts, the more heat is absorbed by the ocean, heating up the planet even more, said NASA polar regions program manager Tom Wagner. That warming also can change weather patterns worldwide and it alters the ecosystems for animals such as polar bears.

The Arctic essentially acts as a refrigerator for the rest of the globe. And the amount of sea covered by ice — thick or thin — has been shrinking at a rate of about 3 percent a decade in the Arctic.

This year, the maximum ice cover of 5.85 million square miles — reached on Feb. 28 — was higher than four of the previous five years. But it was still the fifth lowest since record-keeping began in 1979.

Usually, younger, thin ice accounts for about 70 percent of the ice cover. This year it reached 90 percent, Meier said.

And the problems of global warming caused melt is being seen at the other pole, too.

The U.S. Geological Survey last week released a detailed map of the Antarctic coastline and found dwindling and even disappearing ice shelves.

The map itself was finished in the middle of last year, but the previous Interior Department didn’t want to release it and other Antarctic maps, said map co-author Richard Williams Jr., a glaciologist for the USGS. The report with the map bears the 2008 date and the previous interior secretary’s name on it.

The map shows found for the first time that an entire ice shelf — the Wordie ice shelf on the western end of the Antarctic peninsula— has essentially disappeared. In 1966, it was 772 square miles. In addition, about 4,500 square miles of the Larsen ice shelf is gone.

“The map portrays one of the most rapidly changing areas on Earth, and the changes in the map are widely regarded as among the most profound, unambiguous examples of the effects of global warming on Earth,” the USGS report concludes.

———

ON THE WEB

National Snow and Ice Data Center: nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews

NASA on the thinning ice: nasa.gov/topics/earth

Firefighters remove debris in the city of L'Aquila, after a strong earthquake rocked central Italy, early Monday.

L’AQUILA, Italy – A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing more than 100 people in the country’s deadliest quake in nearly three decades. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured.

Civil protection official Roberto Forina said late Monday that authorities have counted more than 100 bodies. But he could not confirm a report by the ANSA news agency that the death toll had reached 150. The Corriere Della Sera newspaper is reporting that more than 250 people are missing.

The quake knocked down whole blocks of buildings the medieval city of L’Aquila and the surrounding area early Monday as residents slept. It is Italy’s deadliest quake in nearly three decades.

Ambulances screamed through L’Aquila as firefighters with dogs and a crane worked feverishly to reach people trapped in fallen buildings, including a university dormitory where half a dozen students were believed still inside.

Outside the half-collapsed building, part of the University of L’Aquila, tearful young people huddled together, wrapped in blankets, some still in their slippers after being roused from sleep by the quake. Dozens managed to escape as the dorm walls fell around them but hours after the quake, a body of a male student was pulled from the rubble.

“We managed to come down with other students but we had to sneak through a hole in the stairs as the whole floor came down,” said student Luigi Alfonsi, 22. “I was in bed — it was like it would never end as I heard pieces of the building collapse around me.”

“There was water gushing out of broken water pipes, and the corridor which led to the stairs was partially blocked when a piece of the wall came down,” Alfonsi, his eyes filling with tears and his hands trembling, told The Associated Press.

Some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed, officials said. L’Aquila Mayor Massimo Cialente said about 100,000 people were homeless. It was not clear if the mayor’s estimate included surrounding towns.

The quake has also taken a severe toll on the city’s prized architectural heritage. L’Aquila was built as a mountain stronghold during the Middle Ages and has many prized Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance buildings.

Damage to monuments was reported as far as Rome, where cracks appeared at the thermal baths built in the 3rd century by the emperor Caracalla, Culture Ministry official Giuseppe Proietti said. The damage was not serious, and other Roman monuments suffered no consequences, he said.

Parts of many of the ancient churches and castles in and around L’Aquila have collapsed. Centuries-old churches in many isolated villages in the area are believed partly collapsed, and damage to ancient monuments has been reported as far as Rome.

L’Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, was near the epicenter about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Rome. It is a quake-prone region that has had at least nine smaller jolts since the beginning of April. The quake struck at 3:32 a.m. The U.S. Geological Survey said the big quake was magnitude 6.3, but Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics put it at 5.8 and more than a dozen aftershocks followed.

Italy’s national police chief Antonio Manganelli said that several arrests have been made for looting. He said those picked up were “caught while they were stealing from abandoned houses. It’s sad.”

The quake hit 26 towns and cities around L’Aquila, which lies in a valley surrounded by the Apennine mountains. Castelnuovo, a hamlet of about 300 people 15 miles (25 kilometers) southeast of L’Aquila, appeared hard hit, and five were confirmed dead there. Another small town, Onno, was almost leveled.

“A few houses have remained standing, but just a few,” Stefania Pezzopane, provincial president of L’Aquila, told Corriere della Sera. Rescue workers in Onna, population about 250, said the town was virtually deserted as survivors sought shelter elsewhere.

The four-star, 133-room Hotel Duca degli Abruzzi in L’Aquila’s historic center was heavily damaged but still standing and it was not known if there were any casualties, said Ornella De Luca of the national civil protection agency in Rome. “The information is very fragmentary,” she said.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds to deal with the disaster, and canceled a visit to Russia so he could deal with the crisis.

Condolences poured in from around the world, including from President Barack Obama, Pope Benedict XVI and Abdullah Gul, president of quake-prone Turkey.

Slabs of walls, twisted steel supports, furniture and wire fences were strewn about the streets of L’Aquila, and gray dust carpeted sidewalks, cars and residents.

Residents and rescue workers hauled away debris from collapsed buildings by hand or in an assembly lines, passing buckets. Firefighters pulled a woman covered in dust from the debris of her four-story home. Rescue crews demanded quiet as they listened for signs of life from other people believed still trapped inside.

Elsewhere, a man dressed only in his underwear wept as he was pulled from the debris and embraced.

A body lay on the sidewalk, covered by a white sheet.

Parts of L’Aquila’s main hospital were evacuated because they were at risk of collapse, and only two operating rooms were in use. Bloodied victims waited in hospital hallways or in the courtyard and many were being treated in the open. A field hospital was being set up.

In the dusty streets, as aftershocks rumbled through, residents hugged one another, prayed quietly or frantically tried to call relatives. Residents covered in dust pushed carts full of clothes and blankets that they had thrown together before fleeing their homes.

“We left as soon as we felt the first tremors,” said Antonio D’Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L’Aquila with a huge suitcase piled with clothes. “We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pajamas.”

Evacuees converged on an athletics field on the outskirts of L’Aquila where a makeshift tent camp was being set up. Civil protection officials distributed bread and water to people who lay on the grass next to heaps of their belongings.

“It’s a catastrophe and an immense shock,” said resident Renato Di Stefano, who was moving with his family to the camp as a precaution. “It’s struck in the heart of the city, we will never forget the pain.”

The Culture Ministry said a wall of the 13th century Santa Maria di Collemaggio church collapsed and the bell tower of the Renaissance San Bernadino church also fell. The 16th century castle housing the Abruzzo National Museum was damaged.

This was Italy’s deadliest quake since Nov. 23, 1980, when one measuring 6.9-magnitude hit southern regions, leveling villages and causing some 3,000 deaths.

Many modern structures in Italy over recent decades have failed to hold up to the rigors of quakes along Italy’s mountainous spine, or in coastal cities like Naples. Despite warnings by geologists and architects, some of these buildings have not been retrofitted for seismic safety.

Pezzopane, the provincial president, said residents may have been lulled into complacency because so many smaller quakes had jolted the area, including two or three earlier in the night.

“Considering what happened, a bit more concern, more attention might have saved lives,” she said.

National officials insisted no quake can ever be predicted and that no evacuation could have been ordered on the basis of the recent jolts.

“There is no possibility of making any predictions on earthquakes. This is a fact in the world’s scientific community,” Civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso told reporters.

The last major quake to hit central Italy was a 5.4-magnitude temblor that struck the south-central Molise region on Oct. 31, 2002, killing 28 people, including 27 children who died when their school collapsed.

Residents and rescue workers stand near a car swept away by a flash flood after a dam burst on Friday in Jakarta, Indonesia.

CIRENDEU, Indonesia – Torrential rain caused a colonial-era dam to burst its banks outside the Indonesian capital early Friday, sending a wall of muddy water crashing into a densely packed neighborhood and killing at least 58 people.

The flood left scores missing and submerged hundreds of homes. Rescuers used rubber rafts to pluck bodies from streets that were transformed into rivers littered with motorcycles, chairs and other debris.

Officials predicted that the death toll would rise, delivering more than 100 body bags to the scene.

“I’m devastated,” said Cholik, 21, crying as he sat next to the body of his 54-year-old mother. His brother-in-law also was killed and his 1-year-old niece was missing.

“I wasn’t home last night. . . . I should have been there to save them,” he said.

The earthen dam, built in the early 1900s when Indonesia was still under Dutch rule, surrounded a man-made lake in Cirendeu on the southwestern edge of Jakarta.

It collapsed just after 2 a.m. when most people were sleeping, sending 70 million cubic feet (2 million cubic meters) of water cascading into homes.

Several survivors said it felt like they’d been hit by a “mini-tsunami.”

Water levels were so high in some places that people waited on rooftops for rescuers. Telephone lines were toppled and cars swept away, some ending up hundreds of feet (meters) from where they’d been parked.

By mid-afternoon, hundreds of victims gathered at nearby Muhammadiyah University, which was transformed into a makeshift morgue. Many were wailing as soldiers and police brought in bodies, covering them in white sheets of plastic.

Cecep Rahman, 63, lost his wife, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in the disaster.

“The tide was so strong, like a tsunami. They were swept away. . . . There was nothing I could do.”

Health Ministry Crisis Center chief Rustam Pakaya and rescue teams at the scene said at least 58 people were killed and more than 400 houses submerged, some in water 10-feet (nearly three meters) deep.

A 9-year-old girl was found unconscious on one rooftop after the water receded, but she died on the way to the hospital, said rescuer Toni Suhartono, adding the child’s parents and sister were among dozens still missing.

An investigation by the Ministry of Public Works will be carried out to see what caused the disaster, it said.

But Wahyu Hartono, a former official at the ministry, said the 40-foot-high (nearly 15-meter-high) dam has been poorly maintained in recent years because of budget shortfalls. After four hours of heavy rain the spillway overflowed and the base gave way.

“We need to find a way to take better care of these Dutch-era dams and dikes,” he said. “Otherwise, there will be more problems like this in the future.”

Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, a nation of 235 million, where many live in mountainous areas or near fertile plains.

More than 40 people were killed in the capital after rivers burst their banks two years ago. Critics said rampant overdevelopment, poor city planning and clogged drainage canals were partly to blame.

Canada’s annual seal hunt started Monday, under pressure from a possible European Union ban on imported seal products.

The world’s largest marine mammal hunt was called “inherently inhumane” earlier this month by a European Parliament committee that endorsed the bill to ban the import of seal products to the 27-member union. Animal rights groups say the hunt is cruel, difficult to monitor and ravages the seal population.

But sealers and Canada’s Fisheries Department counter that the hunt is humane and sustainable, and brings extra money to isolated fishing communities.

Fishermen sell seal pelts mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil. The hunt exported around $5.5 million worth of seal products such as pelts, meat, and oils to the EU in 2006.

Canadian politicians lobbied intensely to try to convince the European committee that the hunt is humane. The bill must be approved by the entire EU assembly and EU governments to become law, a move that could come as early as next month.

Though acknowledging that the shooting or bludgeoning of the animals is a bloody activity, Canadian authorities contend the animals are killed quickly and do not suffer unnecessarily.

New rules are aimed at ensuring that seals are dead before they are skinned. Hunters are also forbidden from killing seal pups that haven’t molted their downy white fur.

“The picture that has been painted in people’s minds is that we have small white coat baby seals that are being clubbed over the head and skinned while they are alive. It’s just so not true,” Gail Shea, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“Now the population in Europe has bought into this and it has spilled over to the political arena and the politicians are trying to respond to their electorate,” she said.

EU legal experts say the ban could violate world trade rules, and Canada has warned it could challenge a ban before the World Trade Organization.

Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International Canada, said the ban should prompt Canada to end the hunt altogether.

“It’s clear to me that change is in the air,” she said.

But the hunt has overwhelming support in Canada. Shea said her department wouldn’t be able to control the seal population of about 5.6 million without the hunt.

The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972. The Netherlands and Belgium also ban seal products.

Dead long-finned pilot whales lie on a beach at Hamelin Bay after they beached themselves on Monday in Western Australia. About 80 whales and dolphins were stranded on a remote southwest Australian beach where authorities plan to truck the few survivors to a protected bay before attempting to launch them back to sea on Tuesday.

PERTH, Australia – Eleven long-finned pilot whales were returned to sea Tuesday after surviving a mass stranding on a remote southwest Australian beach, but they appeared disoriented and were trying to return to shore, an official said.

The animals had been trucked overland to a bay with deeper waters in an attempt to save them after nearly 70 others died when they beached themselves early Monday in Western Australia state.

Rescuers moved them out 100 yards (meters) to sea off Flinders Bay but the whales began moving back to shore, said Laura Sinclair, liaison officer with the Department of Environment and Conservation.

“They’re meandering around at the moment,” Sinclair said. “It’s not an unusual situation but we’re just trying to guide them out further. If one strands itself again, it could put out distress signals which will bring them all back.”

She said rescuers on Jet Skis, boats and surfboards were trying to direct the animals.

A group of 87 whales and five bottlenose dolphins beached themselves early Monday in Hamelin Bay. One dolphin and 72 whales died before they could be rescued.

Volunteers and government employees worked all day and overnight to stabilize the survivors, keeping them wet and moving them into one pod in a safe holding area with slightly deeper water.

Most beached whales die of dehydration, overheating or from their weight, which can crush their internal organs once they leave the weightlessness of the water.

Rough seas and high waves hampered the rescue effort at Hamelin Bay and officials decided to move the surviving animals overland to deeper, more protected waters in Flinders Bay, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

Four whales and four dolphins were pushed back to sea before the move, Sinclair said.

The remaining 11 whales — which measure up to 20 feet (6 meters) long and weigh up to 3.5 tons — were loaded into trucks by slings and individually transported to the new location Tuesday morning.

It was the latest mass beaching of whales in Australia. Strandings happen periodically in Tasmania, in the southeast, as whales pass during their migration to and from Antarctic waters, but scientists do not know why.

Department staff and scientists took measurements and DNA samples from the dead whales and dolphins to allow scientists to assess the genetic information and population structure of the pod. The dead whales will be transported to a nearby waste disposal area.

Earlier this month, 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded on a sandbar in Tasmania and only 54 whales and five dolphins were able to be saved. In January, 45 sperm whales died after becoming beached on a different Tasmanian sandbar.

NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga – A powerful 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Friday in the Pacific Ocean, shaking an erupting underwater volcano off Tonga’s main island and raising fears of increased lava and ash flows, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of injury or damage from the quake, which was felt more than 1,875 miles (3,000 kilometers) away in New Zealand. A tsunami warning for islands within 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) of the epicenter was canceled two hours later.

“We are quite lucky not to get a tsunami,” Tongan government chief seismologist Keleti Mafi told The Associated Press.

But he warned the powerful quake “will directly affect the eruption” of the volcano about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the southwest coast of Tongatapu island and could lead to more molten lava and ash flowing into the sea. A column of smoke and steam was rising 13 miles (20 kilometers) into the sky.

“The strength of the earthquake could crack the volcano’s (undersea) vent and allow more magma (molten rock) to be ejected,” Mafi said.

A check of the volcano Thursday from a boat two miles (3.2 kilometers) away from the vent showed about “a 10-meter (33-foot) depth of lava at the vent” standing up out of the ocean.

“It’s grown out of the sea,” he said, adding the violent eruption meant “it’s very risky to go closer.”

The quake struck about 130 miles (200 kilometers) south-southeast of the capital, Nuku’Alofa, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The agency recorded a 5.3-magnitude aftershock in the same region two hours after the initial quake.

Officials in the Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa, were relieved the 170-island archipelago appeared to have suffered no injuries or damage.

“Quite remarkable, given the magnitude of it. We might have gotten off lightly,” the national police commander, Chris Kelly, said.

“The house really moved, the trees were swaying and the ground was rippling,” he said.

Local resident Dana Stephenson said the quake started with “deep rumblings … then side-to-side movement which seemed to go on forever but I guess was about 40 seconds — which is long enough.”

Radio stations in Tonga broadcast warnings that people should move away from coastal villages due to the tsunami threat that Kelly said was later canceled.

New Zealand seismologist Craig Miller said “a long, low rolling motion” from the quake was reported by residents on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

A female Sumatran tiger believed to have killed three men is seen inside a trap set up by forest rangers and environmental activists at a palm oil plantation in Sungai Gelam, Jambi province on Sumatra island, Indonesia.

SUNGAI GELAM, Indonesia – Indonesia’s tiger catchers have a double job – protecting humans from tigers, and tigers from humans.

The elite teams of rangers and conservationists rush to the scene every time villagers report attacks or sightings of critically endangered Sumatran tigers. First, they calm the people. And then, if there are signs the animal is nearby, they return with steel cage traps, live bait, heat-sensitive cameras and other equipment to capture the beasts.

This time Sartono (many Indonesians use one name), who at 40 has spent nearly half his life in the job, arrives with his six-member squad at a remote oil palm plantation in Sungai Gelam district, 375 miles west of the capital, Jakarta, knowing they’ll have to act fast.

Three people have been killed in less than a week – Rabai Abdul Muthalib, 45, a rubber tapper ambushed near a river, and days later, Suyud, 50, and his son, Imam Mujianto, 21, who were sleeping in their hut when the yellow-eyed tiger pounced through the thin roof. The beast devoured the brain, heart and liver of the youngest victim, spreading terror through surrounding villages.

Sartono knows if he and his team cannot put a quick end to the killing spree, residents will shoot or poison the Sumatran tiger, which is already on the brink of extinction because of rapid deforestation, poaching and clashes with humans.

There are only around 250 of the cats left in the wild, compared with about 1,000 in the 1970s, according to the World Wildlife Fund, meaning the Panthera tigris sumatrae could become the first large predator to go extinct in the 21st century.

The tiger catchers’ job is to trap the animals, carry out health checks, fit them with GPS tracking collars and then release them back into national parks or other protected areas. Often they come back empty-handed, but this time, not long after beginning their intensive foot patrol through palm oil plantations and peatland forest, they have good reason to feel optimistic.

They find and snap photos of fresh paw prints and, together with experts from the Zoological Society of London, start repositioning their traps around the rugged Makin Group’s palm oil plantation. They use a young dog and a goat as bait but place the animals in interior cages to protect them.

For the next few days, they hike beneath the equatorial sun, their clothes soaked in sweat, in search of clues, while other team members interview witnesses and check out rumors of more attacks and sightings. Finally, they have one of their own.

On a scorching Sunday afternoon, an adult tiger charges out of dense jungle brush and then suddenly retreats into the shrubbery. Slowly, as Sartono aims his cocked rifle at the trembling bushes, the squad walks backward. After the beast manages to bite off the goat’s head and drag the so-called safety cage with its carcass into the nearby brush, the squad finally snags her.

MELBOURNE, Australia – Officials warned Tuesday the wildfires that devastated southern Australia this month could flare anew when high winds and hot temperatures sweep the region later this week, and raised the death toll from the blazes to 210.

Australia’s insurance council, meanwhile, reported thousands of claims totaling more than a half-billion dollars in damage from the Feb. 7 fires that tore through Victoria state.

Four major fires are still burning in the region, and officials warned that temperatures are expected to rise on Friday to the high 90s Fahrenheit (high 30s Celsius) and be accompanied by strong winds.

“It is important that people understand the events of Black Saturday are not over,” Victoria state’s Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin said, referring to the Feb. 7 fires. “The devastating fire season continues.”

Hundreds of fires swept a vast area of Victoria when record temperatures of about 117 degrees and 60-mph winds and forests dried by years of drought combined into infernos. The confirmed death toll rose Tuesday to 210 and was expected to climb further as more remains were identified from the rubble.

Firefighters were continuing to battle the blazes while bracing for the expected change in conditions.

“We have to do our very best to manage both the fatigue amongst our crew, but keep going hard enough so we can contain these fires and prepare for Friday,” state Country Fire Authority chief Russell Rees said.

Esplin said at least 2,029 homes had been destroyed in the fires — up from the previous tally of 1,800 homes — and the Insurance Council of Australia on Tuesday reported that 6,230 claims totaling 790 million Australian dollars ($510 million) had been lodged.

Meanwhile, a funeral was held Tuesday near Australia’s capital, Canberra, for a firefighter killed last week while fighting the blazes in Victoria. Around 500 mourners attended the service for David Balfour, who died after being struck by a tree.

Some 7,500 people have been displaced by the fires, and entire towns lay in ruins. Some sites remained sealed off by police as they searched for bodies and evidence of arson. One man has been charged with starting one of the deadly fires, and arson is suspected in at least one other.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico City residents are thankful to have a home where the buffalo no longer roam.

Police said residents of a western neighborhood called to report buffaloes standing in the street, and the neighbors said they didn’t know what to do.

Two officers were sent to the scene Monday and used a flashlight to herd the animals back to a pen from which they appeared to have escaped.

A man showed up at the pen saying he was in charge of the buffaloes and thanked the police for returning them, but police said they will investigate whether the animals are being properly held.

More than 20 million people live in the megalopolis that is Mexico City and its surrounding suburbs, an urban range where buffalo aren’t usually seen.

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A powerful earthquake off eastern Indonesia damaged dozens of buildings and sent panicked residents fleeing to higher ground, some climbing trees to escape a feared tsunami, officials and witnesses said. At least 17 people were injured.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 1:34 a.m. (1734 GMT; 2:34 p.m. Wednesday EST) approximately 195 miles (315 kilometers) from Manado, the northernmost city on Sulawesi island. It was centered 20 miles (30 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor and followed by several aftershocks.

The temblor was felt strongest on the nearby island of Talaud. Rustam Pakaya, a government crisis center official, said all the injuries and most of the damage occurred in Melonguane and Kabaruan towns.

Patients in one hospital had to be evacuated to a clinic after one of the corridors collapsed, he said. Elsewhere, a church tower came tumbling down. More than 30 other buildings and homes sustained cracks.

The quake briefly triggered a tsunami warning — delivered over mobile loudspeakers and by radio and television. It was lifted about an hour later, however, after the threat of killer waves had passed.

“We were so afraid,” said Damian Geruh, a Melonguane resident who described women screaming as they fled their homes. “We ran to nearby hill. I saw others climbing trees.”

Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake off the country’s western island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people — more than half of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province alone. A tsunami off Java island in 2007 killed nearly 5,000.

Peter Denson and his daughter Amberley (center background) look through the wreckage of Peter's home on Wednesday at Kinglake, north east of Melbourne, Australia. Residents of towns scorched off the map by Australia's worst-ever wildfires returned to their homes for the first time and found scenes of utter devastation.

KINGLAKE, Australia – Australia vowed to push through stalled plans for a national fire warning system on Thursday, though questions remain over whether coordinated alerts could have saved lives in the country’s worst-ever wildfires.

Police released two men who had been taken in for questioning after they were reported acting suspiciously in an area burned out by last weekend’s fires.

“There were no offenses detected,” said a statement from Victoria police.

Authorities say some of the fires that ravaged Victoria state last weekend and killed at least 181 people were the result of arson. Officials said the death toll could exceed 200.

The high toll have increased the urgency for a nationwide warning system, which has been snarled by privacy laws and bickering between state officials over funding for years. But the country’s worst fires in history have added new urgency.

Attorney General Robert McClelland said a plan for a telephone alert system had been before the government since 2004, but that state governments had not endorsed it and that changes were required to federal privacy laws that bar private numbers from being handed out.

McClelland said he backs sending a barrage of automated warnings to all phones in an area where there is an emergency.

Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra Corp., said it could install such a system but had been blocked by the federal privacy laws, said managing director of public policy David Quilty.

“What the early warning system does is it provides geographically targeted messages to phone numbers,” Quilty told ABC radio. “It can provide them to both fixed or home and business phone numbers as well as to mobile phone numbers and it can provide those messages to phone numbers regardless of which phone company that the customer is with.”

McClelland said another reason the system had not been implemented was because officials had to be sure it would not crash communications systems used by emergency services. However, he said the legislation to pave the way for the system was now “ready to go.”

“Clearly a warning system would be useful,” McClelland said.

Saturday’s fires moved and changed direction at speeds of up to 60 mph (100 kph), and it is not clear if a phone warning system would have saved lives.

Officials blame the dramatically high death toll partly on the number of people who appeared to have waited until they saw the fast-moving blazes coming before trying to flee. Many bodies have been found in burned-out cars or on the roadside.

“In so many instances in this fire there was no real capacity to do anything,” Victoria police chief Christine Nixon said Thursday when asked if a warning system would have helped.

Bruce Esplin, head of the Victorian Emergency Services, said a national warning system for fires, floods and potential terrorist attacks was overdue.

“I think it’s taken too long,” he said. “I think we need to work as a country, not as separate states and territories, and it’s time we did that.”

Thousands of mostly volunteer firefighters were still battling more than a dozen fires across the state Thursday, a day after some residents of scorched towns were allowed returned home.

Arson specialists say they have concluded that the fires had six separate sources, four of which were not suspicious. Foul play was suspected in the fire that destroyed Marysville and they are convinced another deadly fire, known as the Churchill fire, was arson.

Wildfire arson carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison, but authorities have said they will bring murder charges if they can. A murder conviction carries a maximum life sentence.

Rain Wednesday night eased several fire alerts, but residents in some areas were warned to remain vigilant as large fires continue to rage.

Authorities sealed off some towns for the grim task of collecting bodies from collapsed buildings and to prevent residents from disturbing potential crime scenes, including Marysville.

Brumby said there could be 50 to 100 deaths in Marysville, a town of just 500 people before the fires. Eight residents have been confirmed dead.

More than 400 fires ripped through Victoria on Saturday, destroying more than 1,000 houses, leaving some 5,000 people homeless, and scorching 1,100 square miles (2,850 square kilometers) of land.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said a memorial service would be organized for a national day of mourning, though the date has not yet been picked.