SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Hurricane Earl battered tiny wow cd key  islands across the northeastern Caribbean with heavy rain and roof-ripping winds Monday as it rapidly intensified ffxiv gil  into a major Category 4 storm taking a path projected to menace the United States.

Already dangerous with sustained winds of 135 mph (215 kph), Earl was expected ff14 gil to gain more strength before potentially brushing the U.S. East Coast this week and bringing deadly rip ffxiv gold currents.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in ff14 gold Miami warned coastal residents from North Carolina to Maine to watch the storm closely.

"Any small shift final fantasy xiv gil in the track could dramatically alter whether it makes landfall or whether it remains over the open ocean," said final fantasy 14 gil Wallace Hogsett, a meteorologist at the center. "I can't urge enough to just stay tuned."

In buy ffxiv gil the Caribbean, Earl caused flooding in low-lying areas and damaged homes on islands including Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla and St. Maarten. Several countries and territories reported power outages. Cruise buy ff14 gil ships were diverted and flights canceled across the region.

The storm's center passed just north of the British Virgin Islands on cheap ffxiv gil Monday afternoon. By nighttime, the hurricane was pulling away from the Caribbean, but heavy downpours cheap ff14 gil still threatened to cause flash floods and mudslides in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by drenching already saturated ground.

Earl was forecast to approach the U.S. aoc gold Mid-Atlantic region around Thursday, before curving back out to sea, potentially swiping New England or far-eastern Canada.

lotro gold The Hurricane Center said it was too early to say what effect Earl would have in the U.S., but warned it could at least kick up dangerous rip warhammer power leveling currents. A surfer died in Florida and a Maryland swimmer had been missing since Saturday in waves spawned by former cheap ffxiv gil Hurricane Danielle, which weakened to a tropical storm Monday far out in the north Atlantic.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal ff14 gil  Emergency Management Agency, said Earl's approach ought to serve as a reminder for Atlantic coastal states to update their evacuation plans.

AP/Johnny buy ff14 gil Jno-Baptiste

"It wouldn't take much to have the storm come ashore somewhere on the coast," Fugate said. "The message is for everyone to pay attention."

Close on Earl's heels, Tropical Storm Fiona formed warhammer account Monday afternoon in the open Atlantic. The storm, with maximum winds of 40 mph (64 kph), was projected to pass just ffxiv cd key north of the Leeward Islands by Wednesday and stay farther out in the Atlantic than Earl's northward path. Fiona wasn't expected to reach hurricane strength over the next several days.

The rapid development of Earl, which only became a hurricane Sunday, took ff14 cd key some islanders and tourists by surprise.

Wind was already rattling the aion kinah walls of Lila Elly Ali's wooden house on Anegada, the northernmost of the British Virgin Islands, when she and her son went out to nail the doors shut buy aion kinah Monday.

"They say the eye of the storm is supposed to come close to us, so we've just got to pray. Everyone here is keeping in touch, listening to the radio," the 58-year-old cheap aion kinah said by phone from the island of 280 people.

After Earl's aion gold center passed, there were reports of roofs torn from homes on Anegada, but the extent of damage across the Virgin Islands was unclear Monday night. Emergency officials said they had no immediate reports of any wow gold fatalities or serious injuries.

"Thank God we survived," said a caller to the British Virgin Islands' ZBVI Radio.

buy wow gold In Anguilla, several utility poles were down and a couple of roofs had blown away, but it was still too dangerous to go out and assess the full extent of damage, said Martin Gussie, a police officer.

At El Conquistador Resort in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, cheap wow gold people lined up at the reception desk, the lights occasionally flickering, to check out and head to the airport. There, more delays ffxiv gil awaited.

John and Linda Helton of Boulder, Colorado, opted to ride out the storm. The couple, celebrating their 41st wedding ffxiv gil anniversary, finished a cruise Sunday and planned to spend three days in Puerto Rico.

"There was a huge line of people checking final fantasy xiv gil out as we were coming in, and I thought it was just that summer vacation must be over," said John Helton, a real estate appraiser. final fantasy 14 gil "But we paid for the room, so we might as well stick it out."

"I don't think we could get a flight even if we wanted to leave," Linda final fantasy 14 gold Helton added.

There were no reports so far buy ff14 gil of major damage from Earl.

In St. Maarten, sand and debris littered the streets, and winds knocked down trees and electricity poles and ffxiv gil damaged roofs. But police spokesman Ricardo Henson said there was no extensive damage to property.

Alisha Daya, a 24-year-old tourist from Milwaukee, wore ffxiv gold earplugs but still had trouble sleeping overnight because of the wind and crashing waves at the Oyster Bay Beach Resort.

wow gold "It was loud because we were right on the ocean," Daya said, adding that the storm delayed their planned departure Monday but the worst seemed to be over.

In Antigua, at least one home was destroyed but there were no reports aion kinah of serious injuries.

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile – An enormous drill began preliminary sto power leveling work Monday on carving a half-mile chimney through solid rock to free the 33 men trapped in a Chilean mine, lineage 2 accounts their ordeal now having equaled the longest known survival in an underground disaster.

The 31-ton drill bored 50 feet into the rock, the first step in the weeklong digging of a "pilot hole" to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill lineage 2 item will be outfitted with larger bits to expand the hole and pull the men through — a process that could take four months.

The men were ff14 power leveling trapped Aug. 5 in the San Jose mine in Chile's northern Atacama Desert. Before rescuers dug bore holes to reach them, final fantasy xiv accounts they survived 17 days without contact with the outside world by rationing a 48-hour supply of food and ffxiv time card digging for water in the ground.

Only three miners who survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China last year are known to have survived underground final fantasy 14 gil as long. Few other rescues have taken more than two weeks.

With Chilean final fantasy xiv gold officials saying the men could remain underground for another four months before the rescue hole is completed, the ordeal ff14 powerleveling will be an unprecedented challenge for rescuers, but they have the tools to be successful.

final fantasy xiv account "The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally," said Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting firm in New Zealand, who has worked extensively with China's government to improve ffxiv time card dangerous mines there.

"This doesn't mean it will be easy," he added. "They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them cheap ffxiv gold down."

In addition, a union leader has expressed concern for the men's livelihoods. San Esteban, the company that operates the mine, has said it world of warcraft cataclysm cd key has no money to pay their wages and absorb lawsuits, and is not even participating in the rescue. State-run mining buy wow cataclysm company Codelco has taken over.

Union leader Evelyn Olmos called on the government to pay the workers' wages starting in September, plus cover the buy world of warcraft cataclysm roughly 100 other people at the mine who are now out of work and 170 more who work elsewhere for San Esteban. Its license has been suspended buy ffxiv gil by the government.

"We want the government to pay our salaries in full until our comrades are freed and then pay our cheap ffxiv gil severances," said Olmos.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the government was prohibited by labor laws from assuming responsibility for the salaries. He said it was buy world of warcraft cataclysm cd key up to the mining company and would have to be worked out in Chilean courts.

Golborne noted the buy cataclysm extraordinary circumstances of the mine collapse but pointed out there are many other Chileans who lack a job and said the government cannot be responsible for all  buy cataclysm key of them.

Union leaders and others blame the government in part for the San Jose accident because the mine had been cited for safety violations in the age of conan gold past but was allowed to continue operating.

In 2007, executives were conan gold charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a miner. The worker's family settled and the mine was closed until it could comply with safety rules, said Sen. Baldo Prokurica, who has long called for tougher buy ffxiv gil regulations.

The next year, the mine reopened even though the company apparently had not complied with all cheap ffxiv gil the regulations, he said, adding that the circumstances surrounding the reopening are being investigated.

Workers at the current rescue ffxiv gold operation are using the three existing bore holes to deliver food, water, air and medicine to the 33 miners, who are trapped about 2,200 feet underground in a shelter large ffxiv time card enough to walk around in.

In an eight-minute video released by the government, the second made by the trapped miners, about a dozen of the men send greetings to their families and say they ff14 time card are feeling better since receiving the sustenance and supplies, including special clothes to keep them dry in the gw2 cd key hot, humid mine.

The government last week said that five of the wow cataclysm cd key miners were suffering from depression, but Golborne said Sunday from the mine site that those men were doing better, had received antidepressants wow gold and were getting counseling.

Helping raise their spirits, the men spoke for about three minutes each to a family member on Sunday after a telephone line was lowered down one of the three aion kinah existing 6-inch bore holes.

The men, final fantasy xiv gil while showing courage that has inspired people throughout Chile and the world, could not help but break down when speaking about their loved ones on the latest final fantasy 14 gold video.

"I'm sending my greetings to Angelica. I love you so much, darling," said 30-year-old Osman Araya, as his voice choked and he began to cry. "cheap ffxiv gold Tell my mother, I love you guys so much. I'll never leave you. I will fight to the end to be with you."

RALEIGH, N.C. – By his own reckoning, a Navy buy ff14 gold electrician spent just eight hours in Vietnam, during a layover on his flight back to the U.S. in 1966. He bought some cigarettes and cheap ff14 gil snapped a few photos.

The jaunt didn't make for much of a war story, and there is no record it ever happened. But the man successfully argued that he may have been exposed to Agent Orange buy ffxiv gold during his stopover and buy ff14 gil that it might have caused his diabetes — even though decades of research into the defoliant have failed to find more than a possibility that it causes the disease.

Because of worries about Agent cheap ffxiv gil Orange, about 270,000 Vietnam veterans — more than one-quarter of the 1 million receiving disability checks — are getting compensation for diabetes, cheap ffxiv gold according to Department of Veterans Affairs records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

More Vietnam veterans are being compensated for diabetes cheap ff14 cd key than for any other malady, including post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds.

Tens of thousands of other claims for cheap ff14 power leveling common ailments of age — erectile dysfunction among them — are getting paid as well because of a possible link, direct or cheap ffxiv power leveling indirect, to Agent Orange.

And the taxpayers may soon be responsible for even more: The VA said Monday that it will add heart disease, Parkinson's disease and certain types of leukemia to the list cheap ffxiv gil of conditions that might be connected to Agent Orange. The agency estimates that the new rules, which will go into effect cheap ffxiv gil in two months unless Congress intervenes, will cost $42 billion over the next 10 years.

Lawmakers and federal officials who have reservations buy ff14 gil about the spending are loath to criticize a program that helps servicemen. They have largely ignored a 2008 report in which a group cheap ffxiv gold of scientists said the decision to grant benefits to so many on such little evidence was "quite extreme."

"There needs to be a discussion about the cheap ffxiv gold costs, about how to avoid false positives while also trying to be sure the system bends over backwards to be fair to the veterans," said Jonathan M. Samet, ff14 gold a public health expert who led that study and now serves as director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern California.

The VA uses a complex formula when awarding benefits and does not cheap ff14 time card track how much is spent for a specific ailment, but AP calculations based on the records suggest that ffxiv cd key Vietnam veterans with diabetes should receive at least $850 million each year. That does not include the hefty costs of retroactive payments or additional costs for health care. The agency spends $34 billion a year on final fantasy xiv cd key disability benefits for all wars.

Dr. Victoria Anne Cassano, director of radiation and physical exposures at the Veterans Health Administration, final fantasy 14 cd key part of the VA, pointed to the wording of the 1991 federal law on Agent Orange that said officials should find a positive link to diseases "if the credible evidence for the association is equal to or outweighs the final fantasy 14 time card credible evidence against the association."

It's a buy ffxiv cd key low bar. But Cassano said the law requires the VA to act without consideration of cost. She also said it is the best way to ensure that deserving veterans don't get final fantasy xiv cd key lost in the shuffle.

"Does it make you take a deep breath? Does it give you pause? Yes," she said. "But you still do what you think is the right thing ffxiv time card to do."

Agent Orange was a dioxin-laden defoliant that was sprayed over jungles to strip the Viet Cong of cover. American forces often got a soaking, too, and Agent Orange ffxiv time card was later conclusively linked to several horrific health ailments, including cancers. So Congress and the VA final fantasy 14 cd key set up a system to automatically award benefits to veterans who needed only to prove that they were in Vietnam at any time during a 13-year period and later got one of the illnesses connected to ffxiv time card Agent Orange.

The VA, interpreting that 1991 law and studies that indicated potential associations, has over time added ailments that have no strong scientific link to final fantasy 14 cd key Agent Orange. The nonprofit Institute of Medicine's biennial scientific analysis of available research, to which the VA looks for ffxiv item guidance, has repeatedly found only the possibility of a link between Agent Orange and diabetes, and that even a chance of a correlation is outweighed by factors such as family history, physical inactivity and cheap ff14 account obesity.

"Whatever the relationship between dioxin or Agent Orange and diabetes, it's a very small piece of the puzzle," said Dr. David Tollerud, an environmental health professor cheap ff14 cd key at the University of Louisville. He led an Institute of Medicine committee that first reported in 2000 on a possible link between ffxiv item diabetes and Agent Orange.

Tollerud's committee concluded that evidence was limited and that chance or other factors could buy ffxiv item not be ruled out. Yet the VA in 2001 put diabetes on the list of ailments that get automatic approval for benefits.

One large study released since then, costing $143 million ffxiv item and published in 2005 after 25 years of research, surveyed the airmen responsible for loading and dumping Agent Orange during Operation Ranch Hand, as the buy ffxiv item spraying missions were called. The final round of testing actually showed the prevalence of diabetes among those participants cheap ffxiv time card was slightly lower than among pilots who did not take part — 18.2 percent versus 19.3 percent.

Some 23 percent of Americans 60 and older have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and ff14 item Prevention.

On Monday afternoon, Jai Cha walked out of the Barnes & Noble at ff14 item 66th Street and Broadway in Manhattan as he does nearly every week — without a book.

Ruth Fremson/The New ffxiv itemYork Times

The 66th Street Barnes & Noble store, by Lincoln Center, has hosted readings and events focused buy ff14 item on the performing arts.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

The Barnes & Noble on 66th Street in Manhattan is cheap ffxiv item closing next year.

“I’m just killing time,” said Mr. Cha, a 30-year-old lawyer, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. “I’ve been coming here to read Bill buy ff14 item Simmons’s ‘Book of Basketball,’ about a chapter at a time.”

He might have to hurry. Barnes & Noble announced on Monday that at ff14 item the end of January it buy ff14 item would close the store, a four-story space across the street from Lincoln Center that has been a neighborhood landmark since it opened nearly 15 years ago.

“We recognize that this store has been an important part of ff14 item the fabric of the Upper West Side community since we opened our doors on Oct. 20, 1995,” Mary Ellen Keating, a company  buy ffxiv item spokeswoman, said in a statement. “However, the current lease is at its end of term, and the increased rent that would be required to stay in the location makes it economically impossible for us to extend ff14 item the lease.”

It has been a bumpy year for Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest book chain, with 720 stores. Sales and store traffic have suffered as the book business has shifted online; Amazon ff14 gil has held its early lead in the e-reader war; and early this month, Barnes & Noble put itself up for sale and is now in the midst of a battle for cheap ff14 item control of the company with Ronald W. Burkle, the billionaire investor.

People ffxiv gil browsing at the Lincoln Center store on Monday lamented the loss of one of the city’s largest and most prominent bookstores, a sprawling space with a cafe on the fourth floor and an enormous music selection. For devoted theatergoers, it ffxiv gold was a reliable site for readings and events that focused on the performing arts. (Still on the fall schedule are appearances by Patti LuPone and ffxiv gold Elaine Paige.)

But many of those same people conceded that they have not bought as many books there as they did in the past. Some said they were more likely to buy ff14 gil browse the shelves, then head home and make purchases online. Others said they prized the store most for its sunny cafe or its cheap ff14 item magazines and other nonbook items.

“Oh, I really am sad,” said Lillian Kelly, a 70-year-old retiree, upon hearing the news that the store would close. “I love buying my greeting ffxiv gil cards here.”

Ms. Kelly said she visited the store at least twice a week, usually heading upstairs to read magazines and to ffxiv gil pick up a sandwich and cup of Starbucks coffee.

“They’re getting business out of me, I suppose,” she said. “Even though I’m sitting there reading ff14 gold magazines for free.”

Roger Hawkins, a former television news producer who was busy e-mailing on his laptop in the cafe, said he had been a Barnes & Noble member, giving him buy ffxiv account additional discounts on purchases, but let his membership lapse after he started buying audiobooks online instead. “There are other reasons that people cheap ffxiv gil come to this bookstore,” Mr. Hawkins said. “You don’t have park benches on the street anymore. It’s hard to find a place where you can sit down and have a ff14 gil cup of coffee.”

At the store’s entrance on Broadway, a steady stream of customers pushed through the revolving doors. A teenager in a turquoise T-shirt walked out, scarfing down a buy ffxiv gold scone, but with no books in his hand. A couple from Tennessee paused outside the store, but decided to wander down the block to the Lincoln Square buy ffxiv gold movie theater instead.

Melissa Rosati, an adjunct professor of publishing at Pace University, said she bought nearly  buy ffxiv gold everything online but came to the store on Monday to spend a $25 gift card on “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

“It’s not like I’m going to miss it that much,” she said. “ff14 gold There’s another Barnes & Noble on 82nd and Broadway” (the one known for helping put the beloved independent bookstore across the street from it, ff14 gold Shakespeare & Company, out of business 14 years ago).

Ms. Keating, the Barnes & Noble spokeswoman, said a search was under way for a new location on the Upper West Side, but she declined ffxiv gold to provide details.

Two other Barnes & Noble stores in Manhattan, one on Astor Place and one in Chelsea, have closed in the last three years. But Barnes & Noble still has the huge store at ff14 power leveling 82nd Street, and in July 2009, it opened a 50,000-square-foot superstore at 86th Street and buy ff14 power leveling Lexington Avenue.

One result of the book chain’s uncertain year may be that much of the old animosity toward Barnes & Noble, once seen by some residents as a ffxiv power level corporate bully that helped squash small, independent bookstores, has lately been replaced with affection.

Monica Blum, ffxiv power leveling the president of the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District, said she detected a change in the way people viewed big bookstores.

“It is a community gathering space,” Ms. ffxiv power leveling Blum said. “I think the larger bookstores have worked hard to become those kinds of spaces.”

Dora buy ff14 power leveling Schulman, a shoe saleswoman who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1960s, left clutching a CD. “It’s a pity,” she said. “All the cheap ffxiv gold stores on my route are closing — first Tower cheap ffxiv power leveling Records, then Blockbuster, now this.”