Volcano

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

Scientists dissecting the remains of the disastrous 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state say that crystal formations trapped in volcanic rocks hold important clues about when a magma-loaded mountain is about to blow - a discovery that could help volcanologists make more accurate predictions about future eruptions. The findings, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, link the movement of underground magma to earthquakes, gas emissions and other warning signs that are more accessible to experts who monitor active volcanoes above ground.

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.

Lunch With the President Jason, 2nd grade NEW Academy Canoga Park If I had lunch with President Barack Obama, I would have it by the Lincoln Memorial. We would have tamales and tamarindo. We would talk about our favorite presidents. Mine is Washington. His is Lincoln. I would introduce him to my family. We would eat mom's tostados. Then we would go back to the White House. A Snowflake Just Like Me Samantha, 2nd grade MSU Academy Huntington Beach I am a snowflake.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

Here's a way to see more of Costa Rica it at your own pace. The Costa Rica Fly & Drive package from Gate1 Travel starts with a drive from capital city San Jose to Arenal,  known for its volcano and national park of the same name. From there, it's on to visit Monteverde and a cloud forest reserve that has a treetop walkway on suspended bridges and trails. Drives between cities take three to four hours if you follow the recommended itinerary for this self-guided trip.

More proof that Indonesia is one of the most volcanically active places on the great Pacific Ring of Fire came in October 2010, when 9,560-foot Mt. Merapi, visible from the temple of Borobudur, erupted, killing 343 people and displacing an estimated 90,000. The road leading to the mountain was closed, but visitors can still see evidence of continuing volcanism on the island of Java by making a trip the Dieng Plateau. The area, about 75 miles northwest of the city of Yogyakarta, is the wide caldera of an extinct volcano, now covered by potato fields, villages - each with its own candy-colored mosque - and the island's oldest Hindu temples.

Howler monkeys, crocodiles, toucans, parrots and lots of birds star in this 10-day trip to Costa Rica sponsored by the Greater L.A. Zoo Assn. The naturalist-led expedition explores Volcan Poas National Park to learn about active volcanoes, the Monteverde Cloud Forest mountain reserve, Carara National Park on the Pacific Coast and a rain forest at Braulio Carrillo, with an aerial tram that takes you into the tree canopy. A tour of capital city San Jose also is included. When: Costa Rica: Nature's Treasure House runs from Nov. 11-20.

Face it - we were born way too late. Barring a biblical revelation, we'll never know what the Beginning of Everything looked like, whether it was a Creation or a Big Bang or something else we haven't figured out. But after one sunrise on Haleakala, I do know what an epic earthly event looks like. You fly to Maui, take to your hotel bed nice and early, and ask for a wake-up call around 2:30 a.m. Then, even though this is a balmy Hawaiian island, you bundle up and drive up the slope of the dead volcano that dominates the island's geography.

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.

  Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala, confronted Tuesday with canceled flights due to the ash cloud from Chile's Puyehue volcano, resorted to traveling by boat instead of airplane to keep an appointment with Argentine PresidentCristina Fernandez de Kirchner. A day earlier, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also eager to meet with Fernandez, caught a bus for the 400-mile ride from Cordoba, Argentina, to Buenos Aires. His flight from Bogota, the Colombian capital, had been forced to land before reaching the Argentine capital because of Puyehue.

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.

President Obama will probably cut short his one-day Indonesia visit because volcanic ash is complicating air travel in the region, aides said as Air Force One arrived here Tuesday. The change would be just the latest of several disruptions in the president's trip to the country where he lived for a while as a child. The Tuesday arrival comes after two cancellations earlier in the year, first because of a congressional vote on the president's healthcare plan and then because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

With Iceland 's Grimsvotn volcano no longer spewing ash, officials on Wednesday cautiously predicted a reprieve from the ash cloud that closed air space and idled planes this week in parts of Britain and the Continent. Earlier Wednesday, about 450 flights were canceled in Germany, affecting airports in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin. The three airports reopened later in the day. Now the British Meteorological Office expects minimal ash over the Britain and the Continent for the next few days, good news for British travelers this weekend who have Monday off as a national holiday.

High concentrations of volcanic ash from the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland are wafting over northern parts of Britain and have forced the cancellation of 500 flights across Europe, the European air traffic center said Tuesday. Eurocontrol also predicted more cancellations Wednesday as the cloud drifts toward Denmark, southern Norway and southwest Sweden. But the agency also expects the number of future flights affected by the cloud will be relatively low. Airlines such as British Airways , KLM , Aer Lingus , Loganair , Ryanair and others that canceled flights Monday and Tuesday have been scrambling to keep passengers informed of operations using Twitter, Facebook and websites, telling passengers not to come to the airport if their flight has been canceled.