‘Brown ocean’ effect may bedevil Texas
DALLAS – The historic rainfall that inundated Texas in May continues to leave the soil saturated and rivers engorged, but a scientist involved in a NASA-funded research project says it also could strengthen a storm moving inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
A broad area of low pressure that developed near the Yucatan Peninsula could brew nasty weather along the Texas and Louisiana coasts and inland. These low-pressure systems can become tropical storms that gather power from the warm waters of the ocean, and then weaken once they move over land.
But the research has found some storms actually can strengthen over land by drawing from the evaporation of abundant soil moisture, a phenomenon known as the “brown ocean” effect, according to Marshall Shepherd, director of atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia.
“All the things a hurricane likes over the ocean is what we have over land right now,” said Shepherd, one of the principals who conducted the research.
Racial identity spat hits Spokane NAACP
SPOKANE, Wash. – Rachel Dolezal resigned as president of the NAACP’s Spokane chapter Monday just days after her parents said she is a white woman posing as black – a dizzyingly swift fall for an activist credited with injecting remarkable new energy into the civil-rights organization.
The furor touched off fierce debate around the country over racial identity and divided the NAACP itself.
“In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,” Dolezal wrote on the group’s Facebook page.
City officials, meanwhile, are investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she landed an appointment to Spokane’s police oversight board. On her application, she said her ethnic origins included white, black and American Indian.
Sikh wins battle with Army over hair, turban
MINEOLA, N.Y. – A Sikh college student from New York said Monday he is excited about a federal court decision that will permit him to enroll in the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps without shaving his beard, cutting his hair or removing his turban.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the ruling Friday in Washington, D.C., saying 20-year-old Iknoor Singh’s adherence to his religious beliefs would not diminish his ability to serve in the military.
“I didn’t believe it at first when I heard about the decision,” said Singh, who lives in the New York City borough of Queens.
He told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday: “It was kind of surreal. This is something I have been fighting for, for two or three years. I’m excited and nervous; very excited to learn.”
Man with rifle shot near air force base
JACKSONVILLE, Ark. – A civilian armed with a rifle was shot and critically wounded after trying to enter Little Rock Air Force Base on Monday, though it wasn’t immediately clear why the man was trying to enter the sprawling base, military officials and police said.
Col. Charles Brown Jr., the commander of the base, said an SUV jumped a curb and knocked over a street sign near the base’s front gate before the driver got out with a rifle. Brown said guards began firing after seeing the man was armed.
Brown said at a news conference Monday that he didn’t know whether the man fired his weapon at the scene or said anything to the guards.
N.C. shark victims were in shallow water
OAK ISLAND, N.C. – Beachgoers cautiously returned to the ocean Monday after two young people lost limbs in separate, life-threatening shark attacks in the same town in North Carolina.
A 12-year-old girl lost her left hand and suffered a leg injury Sunday afternoon; then, about an hour later and 2 miles away, a shark bit off the left arm of a 16-year-old boy. Both were about 20 yards offshore, in waist-deep water.
A shark expert says the best response after one of these extremely rare attacks is to temporarily close beaches that lack lifeguards, but local officials said they did their best to warn people and aren’t sure they can force people out of the water.
“We moved very quickly (Sunday) after the first attack. We were trying to get people on the beach with megaphones and ATVs to warn people to get out of the water,” Oak Island City Manager Tim Holloman said at a news conference.
Associated Press
