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CHICAGO — High winds produced dangerous, 10- to 16-foot waves along the lakefront path, knocking down morning bikers and runners on Friday.
Police closed off the path from North Fullerton Avenue, but some runners and bikers didn't heed the warnings. NBCChicago helicopter footage showed several people taking spills into the waves, though no injuries were reported.
By 9 a.m., police were standing at the path to reroute bikers and runners. The path will remain closed until further notice, they said. The waves aren't expected to recede until the afternoon, said meteorologist Andy Avalos.
Overnight, 30 to 35 mph winds with gusts of up to 50 mph hit parts of the area, knocking out power to about 27,000 ComEd customers. The strong winds also were blamed for a building collapse in Little Village and a fire in Glenview, among other local damage.
Gusty wind continued Friday even after an advisory expired at 5 a.m. for the metro area. Spotty early morning showers will push east into northwest Indiana, potentially causing flooding, as clouds slowly break in Chicago for partial sunshine.
Unseasonably cool temps are expected Friday afternoon, along with gusts between 20 and 25 mph. Highs of upper 50s and low 60s continue throughout the weekend.
Updated
NASA says there are fewer giant asteroids in space than once thought and most of the biggest near-Earth asteroids have been found, leaving little threat of one smashing into the planet.
The latest data from the US space agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE telescope, shows 93 per cent of asteroids one kilometre and larger have been found.
Scientists used to think there were about 1,000 of them, but they have revised that number down to 981, of which 911 have been located and are being tracked.
"The risk of a really large asteroid impacting the Earth before we could find and warn of it has been substantially reduced," said Tim Spahr, the director of the Minor Planet Centre at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Where the challenge remains is with mid-sized near-Earth asteroids that are 100 metres and larger.
The WISE data shows there are about 19,500 - not 35,000 as previous data suggested - and that only 5,200 of these are being tracked.
That leaves nearly 15,000 yet to be found.
A near-Earth asteroid is defined as a space rock that orbits within 195 million kilometres of the sun into Earth's orbital vicinity.
Amy Mainzer, the lead author of the latest research which appears in the Astrophysical Journal, said WISE has given astronomers a better sense of what is out there, and what is not.
"It's like a population census, where you poll a small group of people to draw conclusions about the entire country," she said.
Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.
TORONTO (AP) — Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in newly published research.
The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say. Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes. The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life and changes the look of Canada's coastline.
Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research published on Carleton University's website. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections five years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.
Copland said the shelf went from a 16-square-mile (42-square-kilometer) floating glacier tongue to 9.65 square miles (25 square kilometers), and the second section from 13.51 square miles (35 square kilometers) to 2 square miles (7 square kilometers), off Ellesmere Island's northern coastline.
This past summer, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf's central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 87.65 and 28.75 square miles (227 and 74 square kilometers) respectively, reduced from 131.7 square miles (340 square kilometers) the previous year.
"It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there's nothing in between now but water," said Copland.
Copland said those two losses are significant, especially since the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has always been the biggest, the farthest north and the one scientists thought might have been the most stable.
"Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid, and goes hand-in-hand with the rapid sea ice decline we have seen in this decade and the increasing warmth and extensive melt in the Arctic regions," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, remarking on the research.
Copland, who uses satellite imagery and who has conducted field work in the Arctic every May for the past five years, said since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times the size of Manhattan Island have broken off. Co-researcher Derek Mueller, an assistant professor at Carleton University's geography and environmental studies department, said the loss this past summer equals up to three billion tons. Copland said their findings have not yet been peer reviewed since the research is new, but a number of scientists contacted by The Associated Press reviewed the findings, agreeing the loss in volume of ice shelves is significant.
Scambos said the loss of the Arctic shelves is significant because they are old and their rapid loss underscores the severity of the warming trend scientists see now relative to past fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the warmer times in the pre-Current Era (B.C.).
Ice shelves, which began forming at least 4,500 years ago, are much thicker than sea ice, which is typically less than a few feet (meters) thick and survives up to several years.
Canada has the most extensive ice shelves in the Arctic along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. These floating ice masses are typically 131 feet (40 meters) thick (equivalent to a 10-story building), but can be as much as 328 feet (100 meters) thick. They thickened over time via snow and sea ice accumulation, along with glacier inflow in certain places.
The northern coast of Ellesmere Island contains the last remaining ice shelves in Canada, with an estimated area of 402 square miles (1,043 square kilometers), said Mueller.
Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline, according to data published by W.F. Vincent at Quebec's Laval University. The former extensive "Ellesmere Island Ice Sheet" was reduced to six smaller, separate ice shelves: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ayles, Ward Hunt and Markham. In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf whittled almost completely away, as did the Markham Ice Shelf in 2008 and the Serson this year.
"The impact is significant and yet only a piece of the ongoing and accelerating response to warming of the Arctic," said Dr. Robert Bindschadler, emeritus scientist at the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Bindschadler said the loss is an indication of another threshold being passed, as well as the likely acceleration of buttressed glaciers able to flow faster into the ocean, which accelerates their contribution to global sea level.
Copland said mean winter temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade for the past five to six decades on northern Ellesmere Island.
(CNN) -- Ophelia strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane early Friday, packing winds of 100 mph as it swirled across the Atlantic far from land, the National Hurricane Center said.
The system had appeared to be weakening several days ago, only to regroup and intensify.
At 5 a.m. ET, Ophelia was about 695 miles south-southeast of Bermuda. It was heading north-northwest at nine miles an hour, the Miami-based center said.
Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, according to the hurricane center. The extended forecast map shows Ophelia passing east of Bermuda, where a tropical storm watch is in effect.
Hurricane-force winds extended about 30 miles from the storm's eye, center said. Tropical storm-force winds have been recorded 175 miles away.
"A turn to the north with an increase in forward speed is expected later today," according to the hurricane center.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Philippe was churning farther east in the Atlantic, with its eye some 1,850 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands.
"Some strengthening is possible today...but weakening is likely to begin late Saturday or Sunday," the hurricane center said. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph.
Philippe was heading northwest at around 13 mph, with a shift to the west-northwest forecast for Friday night and Saturday. No land areas have been affected or are in the storm's path through the forecast period, which now extends into Wednesday morning.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Investigators following up on a nuclear sting in eastern Europe suspect that a crime syndicate was trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to buyers in North Africa.
Officials in Moldova, a former Soviet republic, told The Associated Press that 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of highly enriched uranium remains in criminal hands and is probably in another country.
Though that is a fraction of what is needed for a bomb, the investigation has provided fresh evidence of a black market in nuclear material probably taken from poorly secured stockpiles in the former Soviet Union.
U.S. authorities have been aiding the Moldovans in the international search for a Russian believed to be the ringleader of the smuggling operation. They also are searching for a North African man who they believe attempted to buy the uranium in Moldova before fleeing the country.
Neither suspect has been publicly identified. The North Africa link, though, has worried officials because terrorist groups such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb are in the region. The concern is raised in a report prepared by the staff of Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Should the existence of a legitimate buyer (or middleman) from a region with a history of terror cells be confirmed, then the case would be substantially more alarming than other recent fissile material interdictions, where official agents were the sole potential buyer," said the report, which was obtained ahead of its release Tuesday.
The AP has learned details of the investigation from the report and from U.S., United Nations and Moldovan officials. Some of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.
Moldovan investigators, who had been trained by U.S. specialists, set up a sting in June after learning of the ring operating out of the breakaway Republic of Transnistria. Undercover police bought the small quantity, pre-empting the North African buyer.
They arrested six people and seized 4.4 grams (0.16 ounces) of uranium that had been offered as a sample at a price of 420,000 euros, or $600,000. The sellers claimed to have 9 kilograms (20 pounds) more as well as a quantity of plutonium, according to Lugar's report. The group wanted 23 million euros (nearly $31 million) for the larger quantity of uranium, which would have been about one-third of the material necessary to build a crude nuclear weapon.
It is not known whether the group had access to that much uranium. But Moldovan prosecutors, who have interrogated the arrested suspects extensively, say they believe that the group still has at least a smaller quantity.
"Members of the ring, who have not yet been detained, have 1 kilogram of uranium," which is in another country, said Maria Vieru, a spokeswoman for Moldovan prosecutors.
According to U.S. and U.N. officials, the sample of uranium oxide was traced to specific Russian enrichment facilities and was matched later with at least one earlier seizure of uranium. Nuclear forensic experts can analyze chemical traits of uranium and other radioactive material, which can provide a kind of nuclear fingerprint that can be traced to known stocks.
According to Olli Heinonen, a former investigator at the International Atomic Energy Agency, a small quantity of uranium oxide enriched to bomb-grade level could have come from Russian civilian nuclear stocks used in research reactors. But if the smugglers indeed have the larger quantity they were offering, it would signal that criminals had gained access to military stocks.
Moldovan authorities believe the uranium was taken through Transnistria, which is known to be a haven for smugglers. The report by Lugar, who has spearheaded U.S. efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction around the world, says flights into Transnistria cannot be monitored, and the borders between the breakaway territory and Moldova proper as well as Ukraine are porous. The report also warns that action needs to be taken to improve security at Russian nuclear facilities.
The offer of plutonium, if legitimate, also was particularly troubling, because less plutonium is needed to make a nuclear bomb. Unlike highly enriched uranium, plutonium can be combined with conventional explosives to make a toxic dirty bomb that could spread radioactivity over a wide area.
The investigation widened following the arrests when Moldovan authorities searched the office of one of the detained men, a lawyer in the country's capital, Chisinau.
Data found on a computer revealed the group had sought contacts in North Africa for the sale. The police also seized photocopies of passports, including those of the North African and Russian men being sought.
Little is known about the North African man, except that he was believed to be married to a Moldovan woman and fled the country. Officials familiar with the investigation would not say which country he came from.
U.S. authorities have been pressing Russia for help in the investigation. The Russians "are taking appropriate action," said White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor.
The Russian government had no immediate comment on the new details of the investigation.
