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Updated 5.30pm
HURRICANE IRMA HAS weakened to a Category 3 storm, but US forecasters said it will likely regain power as it heads to the US state of Florida.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre downgraded the storm from a Category 4, but cautioned that Irma is “forecast to restrengthen while heading for south Florida and the keys”.
More than 6.3 million people have been ordered to evacuate Florida, as the fierce storm heads towards the State, packing powerful winds of 249 kilometres per hour.
“Some fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next day or two, but Irma is expected to remain a powerful hurricane as it approaches Florida,” the NHC said in its latest public advisory.
Irma is expected to strike the Florida Keys late Saturday and Sunday before moving inland, and many residents have joined a mass exodus amid increasingly dire alerts to leave the State.
The hurricane made landfall in Cuba earlier, leaving a trail of death and destruction on a string of Caribbean islands.
The monster storm had made landfall on the island’s Camaguey Archipelago in the early hours of the morning Irish time, with the eye of the storm just 190 kilometres east-southeast of the Cuban city of Caibarien.
A team of Met officers from the UK are being deployed to the British Virgin Islands today to assist in the policing response to Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean.
The team, comprising one inspector, two sergeants and 14 constables will board a military flight from Brize Norton to Barbados and from there will be deployed to provide policing support to the British Virgin Islands Police Force.
About 6.3 million people in Florida — more than one-quarter of the state’s population — have been ordered to leave, and another 540,000 have been ordered out on the Georgia coast.
Authorities in the US have opened hundreds of shelters for people who choose not to leave. Hotels as far away as Atlanta have filled up with evacuees.
“If you are planning to leave and do not leave tonight, you will have to ride out this extremely dangerous storm at your own risk,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said.
The governor urged everybody in the Keys, where forecasters expect the storm to hit first, to get out.
Irma killed at least 20 people in the Caribbean and left thousands homeless as it devastated small resort islands.
In Florida, petrol shortages and gridlock plagued the evacuations, turning normally simple trips into tests of will.
Parts of interstates 75 and 95 north were bumper-to-bumper, while very few cars drove in the southbound lanes.
To the east of Irma, meanwhile, Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm, is following behind, threatening further damage.
- Reporting from AFP and Associated Press
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Isnt god wonderful….
No….The universe is wonderful.
Your obviously more religous than scientific otherwise you would know your so called God did not create the Universe. Or this World for that matter.
I think there was a slight hint of sarcasm in James’s comment which you all missed
Nice work putting the caption over the actual object in the image…
Erhhhhhh…….they didn’t. Its above the word “at” in the caption right on the edge of the outer ring.
Infinitesmily grand!
Is that we’re the little bo***x Fitzpatrick comes from????
The world is flat, one god created all this and we don’t know who created him/her/it?
I’ve got your ring and new moon right here.
God
Invisible pink unicorn
SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE UNIVERSE CANNOT BE ETERNAL because it could not have sustained itself eternally due to the law of entropy (increasing net energy decay, even in an open system). Einstein showed that space, matter, and time all are physical and all had a beginning. Space even produces particles because it’s actually something, not nothing. Even time had a beginning! Time is not eternal.
The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.
Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing. What about the Higgs boson (the so-called “God Particle”)? The Higgs boson does not create mass from nothing, but rather it converts energy into mass. Einstein showed that all matter is some form of energy.
The supernatural cannot be proved by science but science points to a supernatural intelligence and power for the origin and order of the universe. Where did God come from? Obviously, unlike the universe, God’s nature doesn’t require a beginning.
EXPLAINING HOW AN AIRPLANE WORKS doesn’t mean no one made the airplane. Explaining how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Maker behind them. Natural laws may explain how the order in the universe works and operates, but mere undirected natural laws cannot explain the origin of that order. Once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.
WHAT IS SCIENCE? Science simply is knowledge based on observation. No one observed the universe coming by chance or by design, by creation or by evolution. These are positions of faith. The issue is which faith the scientific evidence best supports.
Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”
An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.
If you discovered a romantic letter or message written in the sand, you don’t have to experiment to know that it was by design and not because a stick randomly carried by wind put it there. You naturally assume that an intelligent and rational being was responsible.
I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles: NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION and HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM
Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION
Babu G. Ranganathan*
(B.A. Bible/Biology)
Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS
*I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.
Wake me up when you’ve finished the lecture. Time and place. This is neither.
There’s a spacecraft leaving tomorrow for it be on it the lot of you
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