Saturday, September 05, 2009 MEXICO CITY: The remnants of what was once Hurricane Jimena lashed the northwestern Mexican mainland on Friday, blocking roads and cutting electricity and phone lines to two isolated towns, officials said.Jimena was a Category Four hurricane -- the most powerful of 2009 -- shortly before making landfall on the Baja California peninsula Wednesday, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. It has since weakened to Tropical Depression strength, but still packs a powerful punch.Mexican authorities said at least two towns in the desert state of Sonora had been cut off by the storm, now gusting at 30 miles (45 kilometers) per hour."Guaymas and Empalme are isolated, there is neither light, nor telephone communications and the roads are closed," said Marco Antonio Marquez, from the state's civil protection service."Seventy percent of these cities are flooded and in some places the water has risen to such a level that people had to take shelter on the roofs of their homes," he said.An unidentified man was found dead Thursday after trying to ride out the storm at his home in the town of Mulege, halfway up the sparsely populated Baja peninsula.As of 1500 GMT Friday, the eye of Jimena had drifted to about 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Santa Rosalia, the NHC said, warning however that some areas could see up to 76 centimeters (30 inches) of total rain accumulation.It is expected to weaken further while its center heads westward back over the Baja California peninsula later Friday.Luxury tourist resorts on the southern tip of the peninsula were spared a direct hit and most foreigners fled before Jimena struck.The US State Department on Friday urged would-be visitors "to consider carefully the risks of travel to areas in Mexico that remain affected"More than 15,000 families had been evacuated from high-risk zones and thousands of tourists deserted the resorts as Jimena barreled in from the Pacific.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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