Fla. hurricane warnings issued as Isaac hits Haiti

Those considered most vulnerable were urged to move into an evacuation camp housed in a school building, but others with nowhere else to go were digging trenches to avoid the water. Haiti's population remains especially vulnerable due to the country's sprawling shanty towns. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

By NBC News staff and wire services

Updated at 7:40 a.m. ET: Tropical Storm Isaac dumped heavy rains on Haiti on Saturday, threatening floods and mudslides in a country where hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless more than two years after a devastating earthquake.

Lashing rains and high winds were reported along parts of Haiti's southern coast and in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, where more than 350,000 survivors of the 2010 earthquake are still living in fragile tent and tarpaulin camps.

Intermittent power outages affected the greater Port-au-Prince area in the early hours of Saturday as Isaac bore down on the impoverished Caribbean country.

---

At 5 a.m. ET, the U.S. National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for the Florida Keys, including the Dry Tortugas, the west coast of Florida from Bonita Beach southward and Florida Bay.

It also issued a hurricane watch notice for Florida?s east coast from Golden Beach southward.

The NHC also said the Bahamas government had issued a hurricane watch for Andros Island.

The NHC's notice at 5 a.m. said Isaac had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, down from 70 mph earlier Saturday, and was about 150 miles southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba.

'Life-threatening flash floods'
The Weather Channel reported that bands of heavy rain triggered flooding in Puerto Rico through Friday, even with Isaac's center well to the southwest. A bridge collapse and mudslide was reported early Friday. Power outages were also reported. The U.S. Virgin Islands were also affected.

The Weather Channel said heavy rainbands on the cyclone's eastern flank were expected to continue to hammer Haiti and the Dominican Republic. ?

Follow Isaac's path with our storm tracker

Storm total rainfall of 8 to 12 inches is possible, with up to 20 inches locally, The Weather Channel said. Additionally, 4- to 8-inches of rainfall, with isolated incidents of 12 inches, was possible in Jamaica. ?

"Life-threatening flash floods and mudslides will likely result from that amount of rain," it warned.

Aid workers prep Haiti's tent city residents for Isaac's onlsaught

Isaac's march across the Caribbean comes as U.S. Republicans prepare to gather in Tampa, on Florida's central Gulf Coast, for Monday's start of their national convention ahead of the November presidential election.

The convention is still expected to proceed as planned but Gulf of Mexico operators began shutting down offshore oil and gas rigs on Friday ahead of the storm.

But the biggest immediate concern was heavily deforested Haiti.

With nearly 400,000 people still living in evacuation tents, a hurricane or even a tropical storm could lead to deaths and more damage to the already fragile country. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

On Friday, the government and aid groups evacuated thousands of tent camp dwellers but many Haitians chose to remain in their flimsy, makeshift homes, apparently out of fear they will be robbed, said Bradley Mellicker, head of disaster management for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

"There's a lot of people who are resisting because they are scared of losing what little they have now," Mellicker said.

Churches, schools are shelters
About 3,000 volunteers from the government's Civil Protection office were dispatched across Haiti, warning people about flood and landslide risks, and about 1,250 shelters -- schools, churches or other community buildings -- that have opened their doors to house people seeking refuge from the storm.

But Red Cross officials said the number of shelters could be grossly inadequate and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe acknowledged Haiti had "limited means" to ensure public safety.

Red Cross and IOM representatives joined government officials in trying to evacuate 8,000 of the "most vulnerable people," including 2,500 sick and disabled, from 18 tent camps in low-lying coastal areas of Port-au-Prince.

Live updates and analysis from weather.com
Transcript of weather.com experts answering Isaac questions?

Many Haitians, most of whom scrape by on less than $1 per day, consider disaster an inevitable part of life in the poorest country in the Americas.

"We live under tents. If there's too much rain and wind, water comes in. There's nothing we can do," said Nicholas Absolouis, an unemployed 34-year-old mechanic at one camp for homeless people on the northern edge of the chaotic capital.

"There are still too many people living in the camps. There's a good chance that those might be destroyed with the passage of the cyclone," said France Hurtubise of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Haiti.

Flooding could also help reignite a cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 7,500 people in Haiti since the disease first appeared in October 2010, foreign aid workers said.

Could hit New Orleans
On its current path, forecasters said Isaac would hit Cuba and the southern tip of Florida before making landfall anywhere from the Florida Panhandle in the northwestern part of the state to Alabama and as far west as New Orleans.

A tropical storm warning was issued for the entire coast of south Florida on Friday, and a hurricane warning also went into effect in the Florida Keys.

Party leaders are going ahead with their plans to host the Republican Convention in Florida, but GOP and Tampa officials have not ruled out the possibility of postponing the event if the storm poses a public safety risk. ?NBC's Kerry Sanders reports.

Isaac has drawn especially close scrutiny because of the Republican Party's convention, a four-day meeting during which former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will receive the party's presidential nomination.

Party officials insist the convention will go ahead, even if they have to alter the schedule. But NHC meteorologist Rick Danielson said Tampa could potentially be hit by coastal flooding and driving winds or rain.

"There is still a full range of possible impacts on Tampa at this point," he said.

Danielson said it was very hard to project intensity before Isaac passes over mountainous Cuba on Saturday and Sunday and enters the Florida Straits. But the Florida Keys, the island chain off the southernmost part of the state, were definitely in harm's way.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/25/13469000-hurricane-warnings-issued-for-florida-as-isaac-lashes-haiti?lite

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Taylor Swift, Conor Kennedy visit his mom's grave

[unable to retrieve full-text content]BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) ? Country singer Taylor Swift joined several members of the Kennedy clan, including boyfriend Conor Kennedy, in a somber weekend visit to the grave of his mother on Cape Cod.

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-08-21-People-Kennedy-Swift/id-7e5ce751ed37472791c63358c1218f87

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2 Chainz Promises G.O.O.D. Opening Act For His Tour

'G.O.O.D. Music has a roster; it's just not like three or four people,' 2 Chainz says of Kanye West and his extended G.O.O.D. family.
By Rob Markman, with reporting by Sway Calloway

2 Chainz on "RapFix Live"
Photo: Natasha Chandel/ MTV News

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1692286/2-chainz-based-on-tru-story-tour-opening-act.jhtml

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Olympics-British gold rush silences gripes over cost

* Government says Games will raise more than they cost

* Olympics to provide only fleeting boost to economy

* London enjoys boost to battered image

LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Britain is counting its medals

rather than adding up the bill after an acclaimed Olympic Games

silenced a debate - for now at least - about whether it was

worth nine billion pounds ($14.2 billion) of public money.

The price was more than double what was forecast when London

was named host seven years ago, never mind the government mantra

that the Games were "delivered on time and under budget".

Prime Minister David Cameron, desperate to revive a

recession-hit economy, has made London 2012 a centrepiece of his

commercial diplomacy to sell UK Plc to visiting business chiefs.

The government says the Games will deliver economic benefits

of 13 billion pounds in coming years - meaning they will more

than pay for themselves - and brushes aside scepticism about the

long-term effects of hosting major sporting events.

Yet away from the Games, the news has been bleak.

The central bank has warned the economy will not grow this

year, the governing coalition partners are at loggerheads and

Standard Chartered has become the latest London bank

caught up in scandal.

Economists say the Games should help Britain's economy to

return to growth fleetingly in the three months to

end-September. Sales of tickets and T-shirts and spending by

Games organisers will provide a short-term boost likely to fade

fast.

After that, it becomes harder to distinguish the Olympic

effect from what is happening in the broader economy.

"We're all having a great time but, similar to most parties,

there's going to be a hangover," said Georgios Kavetsos of the

London School of Economics.

"Mega events, such as the Olympics, do not significantly

increase tangible outcomes such as economic growth, tourism,

employment or wages," he added.

However, he said London might have a positive impact on

British society.

"There is limited evidence on whether they might have

intangible benefits, such as happiness and the promotion of

healthy living."

PROMOTING LONDON

The Games have certainly been a public relations boon for

capital and country, helping to repair the damage done by images

of youths burning and looting in English cities a year ago.

"London has looked very professional and slick on the world

stage," said Sara Parker, London director for the CBI business

lobby group.

"What the last two weeks have done is to show the diversity

of what British business can do."

Britain went through a crisis of confidence just before the

Games began, fearing that transport and security problems could

make it a laughing stock on a global stage.

Those concerns have proved unfounded. The 70,000 Olympic

volunteers ensured all went smoothly and venues in the centre of

London illustrated the city's ancient and modern appeal.

"I was expecting things to be well organised but the warmth

of the people has surprised me," said Manuel Parga, chief

financial officer for the Madrid team bidding to host the

Olympics in 2020.

"I lived in Paris for five years and used to think it was

the real capital of Europe but now it feels like London is the

place."

It is easy to get caught up in the giddy atmosphere in

London, but the Olympics have been a summer sideshow for many.

"The thing about the London games is that everything seems

to have gone well," said Tyson Barker, head of transatlantic

relations at the Bertelsmann foundation in Washington.

"And that means no one is talking about it. If it had been a

fiasco it would be a different matter."

GOLDEN TONIC

Britons now talk of little but sport. The country has

enjoyed its most successful performance at an Olympic Games for

over a century, a tonic during seven lean years of austerity.

The Games have also helped transform what was long a

forgotten and polluted corner of East London.

Stratford, home to the Olympics and one of the poorest parts

of the capital, now boasts Europe's largest urban shopping

centre and excellent transport links to the rest of the capital.

The apartments where the athletes have lived for the past

few weeks will be converted into flats for sale next year.

Athletes will return to the Olympic stadium in 2017 for the

world championships and Britain is also bidding to hold the

world cycling championship in the velodrome in 2016.

Local soccer team West Ham United are the best known of four

potential tenants for the stadium, built at a cost of 430

million pounds, and would give the area a focal point.

Manchester City moved into the stadium built for the 2002

Commonwealth Games and have become Premier League champions

thanks to an infusion of cash from Abu Dhabi.

West Ham's "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" theme tune rang

around the arena in one of the more parochial moments from Danny

Boyle's opening ceremony. That may have pointed the way towards

a viable sporting legacy for the venue.

(Additional reporting by Peter Apps; Editing by Kate Kelland.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/olympics-british-gold-rush-silences-gripes-over-cost-141958565--sector.html

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Hong Kong court approves 'Occupy' eviction

A Hong Kong court on Monday approved the eviction of protesters camped outside the HSBC bank headquarters in the city, in a major blow to the last outpost of the "Occupy" movement in Asia.

"The defendants can't provide sufficient reason to continue to live on the property so the court has decided to allow the plaintiff to take back the property," magistrate Reuden Lai said.

The camp sprouted at the landmark HSBC tower in central Hong Kong 10 months ago, weeks after thousands of people pitched tents in New York's Zuccotti Park demanding an overhaul of the rules of global capitalism.

Similar camps sprang up in dozens of countries worldwide, but most have petered out since police forcibly dismantled the New York tent city in November last year.

The High Court gave the Hong Kong protesters 14 days to leave the courtyard of the bank's downtown office tower, after which HSBC would be entitled to reclaim the site.

Only a handful sleep at the camp overnight, and during the day there are rarely more than 10, according to witnesses and bank officials.

Even so, their tents, personal belongings and banners denouncing capitalism have become a fixture -- some say an eyesore -- at the HSBC building in one of Hong Kong's most exclusive shopping and financial districts.

"We welcome the decision of the court and look to the occupiers to follow the terms of the court order," HSBC spokesman Gareth Hewett told AFP.

HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, brought its case against the "occupiers of the ground floor" of its Asian headquarters, along with three individuals it identified as the ringleaders of the protest.

Defiant protester Tam Mei-kam, 89, said: "They can try all they want, I won't leave."

But fellow occupier Ho Yiu Shing said he would "find another suitable place" to continue his protest.

London-based HSBC was spared the worst of the 2008 global financial crisis and did not receive one of the bailouts that spurred the original New York Occupy movement.

But it has recently been fined and forced to apologise for failing to apply anti-money laundering rules in transactions that US lawmakers say benefited Iran, terrorists and drug dealers.

The banking industry's reputation has also been damaged by revelations of interest rate fixing at British lender Barclays, as well as US allegations that another British firm, Standard Chartered, acted as a "rogue bank" by violating financial sanctions on Iran.

Standard Chartered denies the allegations.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-court-approves-occupy-eviction-043532903.html

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The Olympics: World's Fairs of the 21st century?

In this Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 photo, two women dance to music on loudspeakers under the Orbit attraction at Olympic Park during the 2012 Summer Olympics, in London. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

In this Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 photo, two women dance to music on loudspeakers under the Orbit attraction at Olympic Park during the 2012 Summer Olympics, in London. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

In this Friday, July 27, 2012 photo, a man walks through a train station with the Olympic rings shaved into his hair in London. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

An undated an artist's sketch shows a scene at the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London in 1851. (AP Photo)

In this May 8, 1939 photo provided by Westinghouse, vistors ascend the "electric stairway" in the Hall of Power at the Westinghouse Building at the World?s Fair in New York. (AP Photo/Westinghouse)

In this May 8, 1939 photo provided by Westinghouse, vistors ascend the "electric stairway" in the Hall of Power at the Westinghouse Building at the World?s Fair in New York. (AP Photo/Westinghouse)

LONDON (AP) ? It rose in England's capital with the promise of showcasing humanity's best: supreme accomplishments, fresh technologies, people from far-flung lands and their cultural traditions. It was both trumpeted as a global achievement and dismissed as overly commercialized "trumpery."

It was not the Olympics.

Just a few miles up the road from the teeming venues of today's Summer Games, Victorian London famously convened a gathering called "The Great Exhibition." It was 1851's version of a global event, and it was designed to tell mankind's story ? albeit from the vantage point of a potent colonial power.

It came to be called a "World's Fair," and it inaugurated an era of them. Paris and St. Louis, Rome and Vienna, Osaka and dozens more, each with epic storylines: "Festival of Empire." ''Century of Progress." And "The World of Tomorrow," the 1939 World's Fair in New York, where, for the first time, television entered the popular consciousness.

Once, World's Fairs were the primary chroniclers of human progress. Not so much anymore. But to wander the grounds of the 2012 London Olympics this past fortnight is to see that in the 21st century, the value and relevance of such events still endures.

What World's Fairs once were, the Olympics have become: a chance to get along on a global level while holding onto national pride. Humanity gathering for what it hopes are larger, nobler, more lucrative purposes. The Olympics are a place where the cutting edge is showcased. And in a civilization where so many are connected in such disconnected ways, they are that rare opportunity for an amplified, collective voice to say, or try to say: This, right now, is the story of who we are.

"It's the shopfront to show what we can achieve," says Pryderi Baskerville, a Welshman who helped produce the opening ceremony.

That message ? both achievement and shopfront ? is on display everywhere in Olympic Park, courtesy of the IOC and its corporate sponsors and partners. Nivea invites you to "say hello to the world." At one Olympic Park entrance, a huge sign speaks of "a whole world brought together" ? accompanied by some familiar brand logos. Many nations have set up guest houses around London ? not unlike EPCOT Center pavilions ? where visitors can go to party in the style of the nation that's inviting them inside.

Officials, too, are saying the same thing. "The greatest show on Earth," London organizing committee chief Sebastian Coe calls the Olympics. IOC President Jacques Rogge says they "set an example for us all."

"The Olympic Games have a unique ability to touch people's lives and to change the way they think about themselves and their futures," Prime Minister David Cameron writes in the official Olympics program.

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian the day the Olympics began, spoke of the "hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of millions more via television, drawn by that perennial human compulsion to see what our species is capable of at its best: to see how strong, how fast, how beautiful we can be."

Sure, some of that is simply organizational enthusiasm ? or, just as likely, mere marketing. But is something more significant afoot? Beyond the layers upon layers of sponsor-friendly calibration, is there a message that we humans still need to tell each other, even in this conversation-saturated age?

"It has to do with human understanding, exchange, peace and so forth. Those global international gatherings are always about that," says Paul Greenhalgh, author of "Fair World: A History of World's Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai, 1851-2010." Three of the earliest Olympics, he notes, took place at World's Fairs.

Both World's Fairs and Olympics, he says, have offered nationalism, politics and an "ethos of progress." But while World's Fairs have drifted off center stage in the past generation, the Olympics seem to gain both cultural currency and opportunities to showcase progress in the form of corporate presence.

Even with today's Olympics, Greenhalgh says, "These are almost Victorian ideals ? a growing moral sense that we owe it to ourselves to improve the whole of society, and the underlying notion of progress."

Progress has often been showcased in technological ways ? consider the "Futurama" exhibit in the 1939 New York fair ? but a futurist from that era of streamlining would be overwhelmed by what the London Olympics have to offer.

There are contactless payment systems (from sponsor Visa), freshly minted mini tablet-phones with easy videochat functions (from sponsor Samsung) and even, in the cycling arena, innovative battery-operated hot pants to keep competitors' thighs warm. Environmentally friendly speedsuits fashioned from plastic water bottles. Bendable barbells for weightlifters. The list goes on. When it comes to fresh tech, this is precisely the "World of Tomorrow" that our forebears were dreaming of.

"Twenty years ago, we were in Barcelona looking at the first HD signals on a TV set," says Ed Hula, the editor of Around the Rings, a publication that covers the Olympics.

"That's where this sort of stuff had its proving ground is in the Olympic theater," Hula says. "The Olympics provide that first step for new technology. It behooves the Samsungs and BMWs and others to make the most of this opportunity and have something to show people."

They take full advantage on all platforms. Does Usain Bolt look great on the track? Then let's put him in a larger-than-life Visa ad, striding forward into the future holding a credit card in his hand as mall-walking Olympic visitors surge beneath him. Particularly useful that the passers-by are people of many colors, chatting in languages from Mandarin to Arabic to Portuguese. Like the World's Fairs, everyone plays a part in the show.

"You've got global theater going on," says John J. Bodinger de Uriarte, an anthropologist at Susquehanna University in Selisgrove, Pa. He sees it as an effort to promote globalism ? but a globalism that acknowledges, through resources expended and medals won, who the real powers are.

"One way to look at the Olympics is an affirmation of the world order. We're competing equally ? but wait a minute, we're also not," Bodinger says. But either way, "By having these heroic feats by people in many countries, you say, 'Oh, well, this is possible.'"

How the human story is told is one thing. But looking at the latest Olympics, what is the human story that's being told, exactly?

It is one of amiable multiculturalism ? in pursuit of athletic excellence, yes, but also in the service of creating that many more potential consumers of products. It is a story in which the notion of corporate benevolence plays a key role, in which the hopefulness of the "Olympic truce" winks at politics without letting it consume the entire event.

More than everything else, it is the can't-we-all-just-get-along aesthetic of a post-Benetton society, superimposed upon the most elegant iteration of the global shopping mall.

World's Fairs do still exist. There is an organization in Paris called the Bureau of International Expositions that promotes them, including a reasonably successful one in Shanghai in 2010 and one set for Milan in 2015. But they are not the attention-getting global events they once were. Meanwhile, the Olympics seem more popular than ever.

Why is that? Could it be that a society stitched together by airplanes and multipurpose data bytes no longer feels the need to gather explicitly to refresh its own story? Is that too top-down for the social-media era? Baskerville, the Welshman from the opening ceremony production team, thinks that's what a modern Olympics now offers.

"We don't get many times to show what we're capable of," he says. "We're capable of horrible things as humans. And maybe this is something that unites us."

___

Follow Ted Anthony on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-08-09-OLY-The%20New%20World's%20Fair/id-ade6954df2544d37aa923b82392095b8

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