Massive ice island breaks off Greenland glacier

The largest ice island in almost 50 years poses no immediate threat as it will take up to two years to drift through the Arctic Ocean, the Canadian who discovered it told AFP on Wednesday.Trudy Wohlleben, a forecaster from the Canadian Ice Service, spotted the massive slab of ice that broke off a glacier in Greenland last week as she analyzed raw data from a NASA satellite.At about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) long and 10 kilometers wide, the ice island is about four times the size of Manhattan and experts say the last time the Arctic lost such a large chunk was in 1962.

Environmental watchdog Greenpeace said Thursday it was expecting the disintegration of the Petermann glacier in north-western Greenland, from which a massive ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off earlier this month."We had been expecting since last year that unavoidable break of the edge of the glacier, which we studied closely with an international team of researchers during an expedition in July and August 2009," Mads Flarup Christensen, who heads Greenpeace in the Nordic countries, told AFP.

A giant iceberg that snapped away from Greenland last week is a signal that global warming is causing the island's continent-sized ice cap to melt faster than expected, scientists say.The 250-square-kilometre (100-square-mile) chunk, four times the size of Manhattan, broke away from the Petermann ice shelf on Greenland's northwestern tip.The breakoff -- the largest in the Arctic in half a century -- points to Greenland's worrying potential to stoke sea levels in the coming decades and centuries, climate experts say.

In mid-July this year, a roar echoed around one of the most remote inlets of northern Greenland -- and an island was born. No ordinary island, but a huge chunk of ice, roughly twice the size of Manhattan, that had broken from the Petermann Glacier.

An island-sized iceberg is breaking up as it drifts closer to Australia, producing hundreds of smaller slabs spread over a massive area of ocean, experts said Monday.The 140-square-kilometre (54-square-mile) block of ice, known as B17B, was seen some 1,700 kilometres (1,054 miles) south-southwest of Australia's western coast on December 9, prompting a maritime alert for vessels in the area.But as it has tracked further north and east the iceberg has shrunk to some 115 square kilometres -- still formidable at about twice the size of Manhattan.

An island-sized iceberg is breaking up as it drifts closer to Australia, producing hundreds of smaller slabs spread over a massive area of ocean, experts said Monday.The 140-square-kilometre (54-square-mile) block of ice, known as B17B, was seen some 1,700 kilometres (1,054 miles) south-southwest of Australia's western coast on December 9, prompting a maritime alert for vessels in the area.But as it has tracked further north and east the iceberg has shrunk to some 115 square kilometres -- still formidable at about twice the size of Manhattan.

HALIFAX — Thousands of people on the East Coast lost power and school was cancelled in Nova Scotia and parts of New Brunswick after blasts of winter wind and wet snow swept through the region. Nova Scotia Power reported about 12,000 outages by 8 a.m. local time. In New Brunswick, NB Power issued a news release saying that at least 6,000 customers had lost power in the Fredericton, Rothesay and St. Stephen areas, with more people expected to report the loss of electricity as the morning went on.