Volcano

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government.

An Indonesian volcano that had been dormant for more than four centuries erupted for the second day in a row Monday, spewing white clouds of smoke and ash more than 2,000 yards into the air, officials and witnesses said. Thousands of people living along the slopes of Mt. Sinabung in North Sumatra province have been evacuated to emergency shelters, mosques and churches, said Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency. Their abandoned villages and crops are blanketed in heavy, gray soot.

A California teenager is lucky to be alive, officials say, after falling 25 feet down a scorchingly hot crack in the Earth's surface at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii . Rescuers were summoned shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday to a steam vent between the Kilauea Visitor Center and the Volcano House hotel , not far from the park's main entrance. The 15-year-old boy from San Rafael, who was not identified, fell into the crack while trying to leap over the protective railing that's intended to keep visitors away from the hole.

The Japanese weather agency has reported that a volcano in southern Japan began spewing ash and rock even as the country struggled to recover Sunday from the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. Japan's Meteorological Agency issued a warning Sunday that the Shinmoedake volcano resumed activity after lying dormant for a couple of weeks. The volcano is on Kyushu island, about 950 miles from the epicenter of Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which devastated much of the country's northeastern coast.

The last hours of an alcoholic British consul--an impossible romantic whose marriage is crushed, whose soul is rotting--on the Day of the Dead in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Based on Malcolm Lowry's great novel, cannily directed by John Huston; with a performance of sodden, magnificent grandeur by Albert Finney (pictured) as the consul and a sympathetic portrayal of his hard-pressed wife by Jacqueline Bisset (pictured) (Bravo Saturday at 6 and 10 p.m.).

Slovakia is closing its air space due to the volcanic ash cloud drifting from Iceland. Air Navigation Services spokeswoman Aniko Fodorova says the country's air space will be closed from 3 p.m. Friday. Fodorova says the closure is expected to remain in place until Sunday evening. Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic plans to travel by car to Krakow, Poland, for Sunday's state funeral of late President Lech Kaczynski.

Qantas and Virgin Australia canceled flights that were scheduled Thursday (Australia time) to New Zealand and the western Australian city of Perth as an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano continued to spread into the area and strand thousands more travelers. The cloud has also wreaked havoc in South America . Disruptions of air travel in various parts of the world could last for months, experts say. The Sydney Morning Herald dubbed the cloud over Perth the "plume of gloom" and explained that levels of ash as low as 15,000 feet posed a safety risk for airlines.

This is a good time to keep in touch with your airline if you plan to fly in the next few days to Europe because there is a chance that ash from the huge volcanic eruption in Iceland over the weekend could delay or even cancel your flight. Even as Iceland’s main airport prepared to possibly reopen Monday, Europe was on watch for potential flight disruptions as the ash cloud drifted toward the Continent.   "There is a strong possibility that parts of the ash cloud may impact parts of Scotland and Ireland in the coming 24 hours," Eurocontrol , the European air traffic management agency, said on its website Monday, citing reports from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London.

Guatemala's capital was under a state of emergency and its airport closed Friday after the Pacaya volcano spewed black ash for miles in the southern part of the country. Television reporter Anibal Archila who had been covering the eruption was found dead by colleagues after being caught in a blizzard of rocks and debris. More than 65 people were injured and hundreds of homes damaged, according to news reports. Officials said three children between the ages of 7 and 12 were missing.

Getting information on volcanic plumes can be perilous work. The unbearable heat. The noxious gas. The jagged terrain. So NASA found a new way to carry out the mission without putting its researchers in danger: drones. PHOTOS: America's drone fleet Last month, a team of NASA researchers   sent three re-purposed military drones with special instruments into a sulfur dioxide plume emitted by  Costa Rica's 10,500-foot Turrialba volcano. The team, led by principal investigator David Pieri of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Caña da - Flintridge,  launched 10 flights involving the small, unmanned spy planes.

More than 200 million years ago, toothy crocodile-like creatures stalked a hot, dry mega-continent while squid-like mollusks with spiral shells drifted in the surrounding ocean. Then, in what passes for an instant in geologic time, they vanished - making way for the age of the dinosaurs. How some 50% of terrestrial vertebrates and an even larger share of marine life died off in the late Triassic period has become more clear from new research published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Travelers can sneak a peek at the renovated Volcano House with this deal before the historic property's official reopening in June. The deal: The Volcano House's introductory Pardon our Dust rate offers discounts on both hotel rooms and Namakanipaio Campground cabins.  Each of the available remodeled Crater View rooms costs $200 per night (excluding tax).  Each of the 10 newly refurbished Namakanipaio Cabins costs $55 per night (excluding tax). The historic hotel closed for remodeling in 2010, and the National Park Service and the concessionaire have spent more then $6 million in seismic upgrades, safety improvements and renovations.

PARK CITY, Utah - Year in and year out, some of the most completely exciting things I see at Sundance aren't on any theatrical screen but rather are part of the always invigorating New Frontier installations at the Yard exhibition space. This year was no exception. Curated as always by Shari Frilot, 2013's installations are presented under the rubric of “The Pixelated Pavilion,” an exhibition that promises to “immerse our physical bodies within moving image environments.” It does that with a vengeance.

HILO, Hawaii - About 11,000 feet up Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, a plaintive-looking young couple stood by the side of the road, their thumbs thrust out. Tied around the woman's waist was a yellow sweater as bright as the plumage on a canary that contrasted with the black lava landscape. She and her companion were impossible to miss. Yet I didn't stop. On Hawaii, hitchhiking might be common, but getting the car started again would have been a feat, not unlike the couple's efforts to reach the 13,796-feet summit on foot.

There's still time for a summer vacation, if you head south -- way south -- and like to cycle. BikeToursDirect offers a guided bicycling tour of central Chile that winds through the country's lake and volcano district. The eight-day tour along back roads starts in Temuco and travels south to Puerto Varas. During the trip, participants tour the Andes Mountain area at the border with Argentina and then visit a national park in the Alto Bio-Bio area. Trip highlights include visits to adventure tourism town Pucon, the Huilo Biologicall Reserve as well as Lake Llanquihue, Vicente Perez Rosales National Park and Petrohue Waterfalls.

On the road south from the international airport in Managua, Nicaragua swooshes by, unfurling in buzzing, humid green. Fields of swaying banana trees recede from the road in rows, the shaggy fronds bouncing against a searing blue sky. I look south toward the twin conical peaks of Concepción and Maderas hovering over the horizon. It is Concepción that worries me. It is the active volcano I had committed to scaling. Volcán Concepción towers 5,280 feet up from Lake Nicaragua, Central America's largest lake.

Legionnaires' disease bacteria has been found in waters near the Mt. St. Helens volcano, according to a state study made public Monday, and officials recommended keeping the public out of the area devastated by the volcano's 1980 eruption pending further investigation. The bacteria were found in the waters of Spirit Lake, the upper Toutle River and Coldwater Creek.

"The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection," which opened recently at the Getty Villa at the edge of Malibu, includes a small Andy Warhol painting commissioned in 1985 by a gallery in Naples, Italy. The canvas is rather ugly. But fame was a primary Warhol motif, and its subject - an erupting Mt. Vesuvius - ranks as a rock-star volcano. Vesuvius probably hasn't done as much damage as Krakatau (west of Java), which sent powerful shock waves all around the globe when it blew up with cataclysmic force in the Pacific in 1883.

The Nayara Hotel, Spa & Gardens sits in a quiet section of the rain forest near Arenal Volcano National Park in Costa Rica. It's about a three-hour ride north from the airport in the capital San Jose to get to this cozy boutique hotel with views of the volcano. In September and October, the resort is offering a 25% savings on suite stays. The deal: The Nayara Suite Special costs $149 a person, plus tax, per night. The deal comes with breakfast daily, three-course dinner daily, free Internet connection, a private Jacuzzi on the suite's veranda and an outdoor shower.