Position: 27.3N 63.7W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [310°] near 23 mph [37 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles [165 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

Currently about 350 miles [565 km] South of Bermuda.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Bermuda.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The ABC reports NZ loses out in Hobbit ‘shake down’

New Zealand prime minister John Key has been accused of bowing to Hollywood moguls as parliament rushes through legislation ensuring The Hobbit movies will be filmed in the country.

After two days of talks with Warner Bros, the government agreed to change labour laws and give the movie studio an extra $25 million in financial incentives.

The legislation changes are being pushed through parliament under urgency during the next couple of days.

The government says the measure is necessary to restore confidence in the film industry.

New Zealand will never see the money it thinks that filming in the country will generate, because no government at any level has ever benefited from giving tax breaks to corporations, all benefits flow to corporate profits.

They are changing the labor laws so the film makers can screw their workers.

Conservatives are the same the world over in their naïve belief that corporations are trustworthy. Corporations function solely for the benefit of the corporation. Key got rolled by Warner Bros. who are now “confident” that they can operate with impunity in New Zealand.

There have been a lot of politicians proposing to re-schedule Halloween on Saturday instead of Sunday,the 31^st. Fortunately, in most cases, tradition has triumphed … the Florida-Georgia football game is scheduled for Saturday and you can’t expect parents to miss that for “trick-or-treating”…

In writing about the multiple disasters in Indonesia I mentioned the Kamchatka Peninsula of the Russian Far East as part of the Ring of Fire. Today the CBC reports that Volcano eruptions in eastern Russia spread ash

Two volcanoes erupted Thursday on Russia’s far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, tossing massive ash clouds kilometres into the air, forcing flights to divert and blanketing one town with thick ash.

The Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Eurasia’s highest active volcano, exploded along with the Shiveluch volcano, 70 kilometres to the northeast, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in Kamchatka said, adding that flights in the area had to change course.

If you follow the line of the Aleutians to the Komodorsky Islands and then intersect with the Kamchatka Peninsula, you will locate the town on Ust-Kamchatsk, which was a staging area for the exploration of the area by Vitus Bering, and is the northwest corner of the Ring of Fire.

Ust-Kamchatsk isn’t simply “one town”, it is basically the only collection of people in the center of the Peninsula.