Volcano

Few American musicians in recent years have captured the popular imagination the way the young American pianist Awadagin Pratt has. Pratt, who became the first African-American classical instrumentalist to win an important international competition when he took first prize in the Naumburg Competition a few seasons back, cuts a striking figure. How many classical pianists have the face of a matinee idol, the body of a prizefighter, wear such unconventional concert garb and have dreadlocks to boot?

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's famed Popocatepetl volcano would not erupt without first telling Don Antonio Analco. He's quite certain of it.Analco is a holy man from the village of Santiago Xalitzintla, which lies just seven miles east of the powerful volcano he calls Don Gregorio. Analco says he talks regularly to the volcano, which he believes to be a powerful deity that controls not only rainfall but the destiny of the people who inhabit the lands around Popocatepetl."The day of the great eruption will come, but it will be forewarned," says Analco, whose thick black hair and dark angular face belie his 52 years.

WHEN DIEGO SOLANO returns to Benfield Elementary School Monday for his first day of third grade and his teacher asks, "What did you do this summer?" he's going to have a great answer.The 9-year-old vacationed in his father's native Costa Rica.Diego went with dad, Rumano Solano, and mom, Kathy Solano, a Maryland native, to visit relatives living near the city of San Jose.They toured an insect museum, where they saw praying mantises about a foot long, and a butterfly farm, where, if they held quite still, the butterflies would land on their arms.

Few American musicians in recent years have captured the popular imagination the way the young American pianist Awadagin Pratt has. Pratt, who became the first African-American classical instrumentalist to win an important international competition when he took first prize in the Naumburg Competition a few seasons back, cuts a striking figure. How many classical pianists have the face of a matinee idol, the body of a prizefighter, wear such unconventional concert garb and have dreadlocks to boot?

Riots, mudslides, earthquakes, O. J.Hasn't Los Angeles suffered enough already?Nah, someone in Hollywood said. Let's bake 'em.And so we have "Volcano," a mega-million-dollar production that turns L.A. into an open-air barbecue pit. It's L.A. as a lava-engorged, ash-spewing Armageddon. It's L.A., the makers of "Volcano" movie know all too well, the way a lot of people outside L.A. imagine seeing it.Imagine this: We survived the eons with a grand total of zero volcano feature films only to have two of them erupting in 1997.

A 24-year-old Baltimore man has been charged with fatally shooting two college students and wounding five people outside Volcano's nightclub after a reluctant witness broke his three-month silence.A district judge ordered Kevin Lamont Richardson held without bail yesterday. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted first-degree murder in the October shootings.Police said none of the victims was an intended target. Detective Robert L. Patton said the dispute was over something "real stupid.

On a recent Mediterranean cruise, we passed by Stromboli, a volcanic island off the northeastern coast of Sicily. Are there places to stay on the island? How would we get there, and is it possible to hike up the cone?Stromboli, a 5-square-mile island, is one of the Lipari Islands, also known as the Aeolian Islands. Its steep hillsides, covered with whitewashed, Moorish-style houses, rise to a summit 3,032 feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea. And in a crater 650 feet below that is the volcano, which produces frequent noisy eruptions.

A man who says he saw the gunman who killed two college students outside the Volcano's nightclub a year ago testified yesterday that the shooter was not Kevin L. Richardson, the man on trial in the killings.The witness, Derek R. McIntosh, struggled to give the date of the incident, which could hurt his testimony. How much weight jurors give to McIntosh's testimony could be a key to the outcome of the case, which goes to the jury tomorrow.Richardson is accused of killing Donte Young, a 22-year-old student at Coppin State College, and Lori McDaniel, 19, a second-year civil engineering student at Morgan State University, on Oct. 24, 1996.

The mothers of two college students who were fatally shot outside Volcano's nightclub in October filed a $100 million lawsuit yesterday against the club's owners, claiming their illegal operation of the popular nightspot led to the deaths.City officials closed the club, in the 1000 block of Greenmount Ave., after the shootings, citing the owners for infractions including operating a dance hall without a permit. Five people have been killed and 16 wounded outside Volcano's in the past three years.

Drawn by pulsating music and the promise of ample numbers of the opposite sex, thousands of young people descend on Baltimore each week to party at local nightclubs.For most, it is definitely fun. It also can be trouble.For their part, police tell of how the arrival of a couple of thousand revelers can paralyze an area of the city -- especially on weekends, and especially downtown. They report shootings, snarled traffic and havoc.But that's just how police see it."I'm just looking for someplace to come and get my drink on," said 26-year-old construction worker Anthony Baker as he stood on the dance floor in Club Trilogy on Saturday night.

AT&T Mobility sues Md. company over phone calls AT&T Mobility has named a Maryland company among nine nationwide that it accuses of violating federal law by using automated dialers to make millions of unsolicited car warranty calls to its wireless customers. According to the complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Baltimore-based Volcano Leads was associated with more than 8.4 million calls made from 207-925-1732 between November 2008 through January 2009. AT&T seeks to stop these companies from calling its customers, a violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. It's also seeking damages of $1,500 for each knowing violation.

Minnesotans are a humorous people, and we are attempting to elect a comedian to the U.S. Senate, which is delicate work, as you might guess. You shouldn't sweep a comedian into office on a wave of public adulation any more than you should let him win the heroine in the first reel and fly off to Paris and suddenly start ordering meals in fluent French. You need him to move a piano up a long flight of stairs, and that's what Al Franken is doing now. He is leading the race by 50 votes or so out of 2.9 million cast.

COUGAR, Wash. -- In the dark, foggy shroud of an early fall morning, headlamps cast eerie lights on the faces of a dozen or so hikers lingering at a trail head that leads to the summit of the most active volcano in the continental U.S. The shadowy silhouettes of Douglas and Pacific silver firs border the circular trail head, known as Climbers' Bivouac. Towering overhead, somewhere in the darkness, lurks the angelically named peak that in 1980 unleashed America's worst volcanic disaster.

Here we are, ignorant peasants in our mud huts at the base of the volcano of finance, begging the gods to spare us as the ground shakes beneath our feet and economists examine the entrails of pigeons and the shamans of the Federal Reserve fling handfuls of sacred powder into the steaming crater. We live with a system rejiggered by Republicans - freedom from regulation, but when the manure hits the ventilator, the Feds step in with a few hundred billion to rescue the players - and nobody can tell us ignorant savages how rough the upheaval might be. Nobody knows.

Researchers have discovered the first evidence of a volcano under the ice in West Antarctica - a mountain that erupted about 2,300 years ago and still might be generating enough heat to speed up glacial melting. The blast ripped through thousands of feet of ice and sent ash eight miles into the sky. The ash settled in a giant ellipse and, over the centuries, was buried in snowfall, undetected until scientists spotted it in radar images from a series of airplane flights. The extent of the ash, its thickness and its depth beneath the ice's surface allowed the researchers to calculate the size and date of the eruption, according to the report being published tomorrow in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Aug. 27 1883 The island volcano Krakatoa blew up; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.

MURFREESBORO, ARK. -- His friends razzed him. His wife rolled her eyes. But whenever Bob Wehle could get away, the warehouse manager from Wisconsin would head to the Crater of Diamonds in search of treasure. Last month, Wehle was sifting soil through a stainless steel screen when he picked up a peculiar pebble. It was gleaming, and the color of a lemon drop. "Now that is a diamond!" he recalled hollering. It was a serious sparkler indeed: a 5.47-carat canary yellow gem of unusual clarity.

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia --Significant amounts of aid began arriving yesterday in Bantul, the town south of this city that was hit the hardest by Saturday's earthquake, but a nearby volcano substantially increased its threatening activity. For the third night in a row, residents in Bantul and in Klaten, another ravaged town, slept outside their houses, grouped around campfires and using debris for cover from the rain. Some strummed guitars; others, kneeling on mats, prayed for help. Mount Merapi, a 9,800-foot volcano north of Yogyakarta, has been close to an eruption for nearly a month, but activity weakened in recent weeks.

BEND, Ore. -- Half an hour west of this mountain town in central Oregon, in an area covered by forest, is a growing bulge in the terrain that eager scientists say could be the beginnings of a volcano. The bulge covers 100 square miles and is rising at a rate of 1.4 inches a year. The shape resembles a dome, with the highest point about 3 miles west of the South Sister volcano in the Cascade Range. Geologists say the bulge represents a unique opportunity to study what could be a volcanic formation in its earliest stages, but officials in this town of 65,000 worry more about the potential hazards, such as lava and ash or flying rocks.

New Orleans was warned. Years before Hurricane Katrina's storm surge poured over their levees, the city's leaders and residents were told the dikes could not withstand a Category 4 storm. They knew the worst was inevitable, given enough time. What other natural disasters have scientists warned the U.S. about? And how well is it preparing for the inevitable? There's no question that public officials nationwide are looking at natural hazards in their surroundings with fresh eyes these days.