Mount Victoria (Australia) (AFP) - Firefighters were battling an enormous blaze in southeastern Australia Monday, with officials warning it could merge with another to create a "mega-fire" if weather conditions worsen.

Crews have been fighting fires that flared in high winds and searing heat across the state of New South Wales last week with more than 200 homes destroyed so far and many others damaged.

While dozens of blazes have been contained, 63 were still alight and 17 of them were out of control, enveloping Sydney in a thick white smoke haze that prompted warnings for people to stay indoors and avoid exercise.

The main concern Monday was near the town of Lithgow west of Sydney, where a huge fire -- with a perimeter of 300 kilometres (187 miles) -- has already burned more than 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres) and was threatening the communities of Bilpin, Bell, Clarence and Dargan.

Officials fear intensifying heat and winds on Tuesday and Wednesday could push it into another blaze at nearby Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains and then move towards the populated areas of Katoomba and Leura.

Bushfires: state of emergencyPlay video."

"I don't think I've ever used the word mega-fire," said New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

"But the reality is that the modelling indicates that there's every likelihood that in the forecast weather conditions that these two fires, particularly up in the back end of the mountains, will merge at some point."

Firefighters spent the night and much of Monday building containment lines to try to prevent such an event, before a predicted worsening of weather conditions.

Another major fire around the Springwood area of the Blue Mountains, where almost 200 houses were razed last week, escalated to the emergency declaration level -- along with another in Wilton southwest of Sydney, which was later downgraded.

"The fire grounds remain dynamic and challenging for firefighters and are particularly susceptible to the wind and the elevated temperatures that we are experiencing," Fitzsimmons said.

Time Lapse Footage Shows Australia BushfirePlay video."

But the fire chief played down earlier suggestions that all communities in the Blue Mountains, where 76,000 people live, could be evacuated.

"We are not planning a mass evacuation of the Blue Mountains community," he said.

Instead authorities were taking "a very targeted approach to securing and protecting all the communities".

An emergency warning was issued for the Blue Mountains village of Bell, where residents were urged to evacuate. Other township residents were told to shelter in their homes or warned that they faced several days of isolation without electricity.

This included people in the village of Mount Wilson, which was used as the backdrop for scenes in the recent Hollywood blockbuster "The Great Gatsby" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Major Bushfire Threatens Lithgow, New South WalesPlay video."

Amid the worst fire disaster in the state for nearly 50 years, New South Wales Sunday declared a state of emergency which gives firefighters the power to forcibly evacuate people, with penalties for refusing.

State Emergency Services Minister Mike Gallacher said every possible resource was being used, including firefighters drafted in from other states, with the option that the military could be deployed.

With hundreds of people evacuated due to the encroaching flames, police revealed they were dealing with reports of looting from victims, although the number of incidents was small.

State Premier Barry O'Farrell called looters "scumbags" and vowed to track them down.

Meanwhile, an 11-year-old boy was Monday charged with deliberately lighting two fires on the New South Wales Central Coast last week, one of which forced hundreds of people to flee their homes and saw the closure of Newcastle airport.

View gallery."

Graphic showing the areas around Sydney, hit by wildfires on Monday that have already destroyed more …

Another boy, aged 15, was also charged with "intentionally causing fire" over one of those blazes, according to the Australian Associated Press on Monday, while a 14-year-old was charged with starting a separate fire Sunday near Rutherford, a suburb north of Sydney, which was quickly extinguished.

Wildfires are common in Australia's summer months from December-February. But an unusually dry and warm winter and record spring temperatures has seen the 2013/14 fire season start early with warnings of a long, tough summer ahead.

Australia faces threat of 'megafire'

Firefighters battling an enormous fire in the southeast region of the continent are bracing for an even bigger blaze.
200 homes destroyed

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The lionfish is a prized aquarium species, best known for its vibrant stripes and spiky fins.

It is also venemous and a voracious predator with a population growing out of control in the Atlantic Ocean along the U.S. east coast.

Long a concern for researchers and scientists, the lionfish is an invasive species in the Atlantic, and efforts to control the population have not been successful according to the Christian Science Monitor.

“There is strong evidence that the lionfish is having negative effects on the native population,” Oregon State scientist Stephanie Green told CSM. “We don’t see any signal that anything is controlling lionfish population.”

The problem is that the lionfish, which is native to the western Pacific, has no natural predators in the Atlantic Ocean. They live up to 15 years, and one female can produce as many as 2 million eggs in one year. That adds up to a whole lot of hungry lionfish. Estimates have the Atlantic population increasing 700 percent from 2004-08 alone.

Growing up to 18 inches long, lionfish are skilled hunters known to eat just about anything they can fit in their mouths. CSM estimates that about 70 percent of the Atlantic’s fish species is on the lionfish’s menu and that at least 40 native species have suffered thanks to the lionfish. They are especially threatening to native coral and have been found with fatty livers from gorging so much on Atlantic Ocean natives.

How did the lionfish show up in the Atlantic? Theories range from displeased aquarium owners dumping them into the ocean to Hurricane Andrew having swept pet lionfish into the ocean in its wake when it devastated South Florida in 1992. Scientists believe as few as six lionfish introduced to the Atlantic led to the boom that exists today.

Commonly seen around Florida, the lionfish is known to thrive from the Bahamas north to the North Carolina coast.

So what’s being done to try to control the population? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associationrecommends getting your spear prepped and your grill hot. Instead of ordering that overfished tuna next, see if lionfish is on the menu.

Despite the poisonous spines protruding from the bodies, lionfish are perfectly safe to eat with the spines removed and evidently quite tasty. Reef.org has published a lionfish cookbook, while lionfish hunts and fish fries have become popular in Florida.

With few ideas to rein in the lionfish population outside of human intervention, expanding food horizons may be vital to the health of the Atlantic Ocean.

Paris (AFP) - The United States was embroiled in a new row over its controversial spying program Monday as allies France and Mexico demanded an explanation of revelations Washington tapped millions of phonecalls.

The allegations, the latest from leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, marred a visit to Paris by US Secretary of State John Kerry, where he discussed moves to try to end the war in Syria.

French daily Le Monde reported that the US National Security Agency had secretly monitored 70.3 million phone communications in France over 30 days from December 10, 2012, to January 8.

German magazine Der Spiegel said the NSA had also hacked into former Mexican president Felipe Calderon's email account.

Seeking to tamp down the row as French officials publicly claimed shock, Kerry said: "We will have ongoing bilateral consultations including with our French partners that address this question."

He refused to comment on the specific accusations, but noted that Washington was reviewing its intelligence gathering operations in the wake of protests from allied governments.

The allegations come on top of previous revelations by Snowden -- who has sought safety in Russia as the US pursues him for leaking classified information -- that the US had a vast, secret programme called PRISM to monitor Internet users.

French prosecutors are already investigating the programme, and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was "deeply shocked" by the new revelations.

"It's incredible that an allied country like the United States at this point goes as far as spying on private communications that have no strategic justification, no justification on the basis of national defence," he told journalists.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, on a visit to Luxembourg, said US ambassador Charles Rivkin was summoned to his ministry early Monday.

"These kinds of practices between partners that harm privacy are totally unacceptable," he told reporters, adding France needed assurances that the United States was no longer monitoring its communications.

His comments were relayed to the US ambassador during the meeting, a ministry spokesman said -- the second time in less than four months that America's top representative in France has been hauled in over revelations about US snooping.

Review to balance security and privacy

But Kerry sought to defend the US position.

"Protecting the security of our citizens in today's world is a very complicated, very challenging task... because there are lots of people out there seeking to do harm to other people," Kerry said at a press conference after meeting Arab League officials.

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This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contra …

"Lots of countries are engaged in the activity of trying to protect their citizens in the world," he said. "Our goal is always to try to find the right balance between protecting the privacy and security of our citizens."

According to Le Monde, the spy agency automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded certain text messages under a programme code-named "US-985D".

The French daily said the documents gave grounds to believe that the NSA targeted not only people suspected of being involved in terrorism but also high-profile individuals in business and politics.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Paris was entitled to feel outraged. "I understand the outrage and the anger in France at spying actions wholeheartedly -- that is not how it should work between partners, between friends," he said.

'A lucrative source'

Der Spiegel also revealed that US agents had hacked into the Mexican presidency's network, gaining access to Calderon's account.

According to the report, the NSA said this contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability."

The agency reportedly said the president's office was now "a lucrative source."

Mexican authorities said they would be seeking answers from US officials "as soon as possible."

"This practice is unacceptable, illegitimate and contrary to Mexican law and international law," the foreign ministry said.

This is not the first time France and Mexico have been targeted under NSA spying allegations since information leaked by Snowden first emerged in June.

Mexico's current President Enrique Pena Nieto has already complained to Obama over reports US spies have gone through his emails.

And Der Spiegel reported last month that in 2010 the NSA monitored the internal computer network of France's diplomats and that of the foreign ministry.

But France itself has also been accused of spying. Le Monde reported over the summer that intelligence services intercepted all communications in the country, stocking telephone and computer data for years -- accusations denied by the government.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has also postponed a planned visit to Washington in protest at NSA spying on her official communications.


White House responds to new NSA claims

Washington declines comment as Mexico and France demand answers regarding the latest reports of spying.
'All nations' do it.

The gay couples in N.J. who finally got to say 'I do'

NEWARK, N.J.—Right after the stroke of midnight Monday, seven same-sex couples said “I do” in the marble rotunda of Newark’s City Hall as New Jersey became the 14th state in the union to allow gay marriage.

Senator-elect Cory Booker presided over the weddings, enthusiastically telling each couple, “you may kiss your spouse,” after warning that marriage should not be entered into lightly. The new spouses included a bus driver, two social workers, a municipal court data processor and the retired dean of students at Rutgers University.

“Today is a victory for love,” Booker said, before the newlywed couples chowed down on cake and sipped champagne as dozens of news cameras and reporters watched from behind a roped-off area. The state’s Supreme Court rejected a request from Gov. Chris Christie’s administration last Friday to delay the weddings until it makes a final decision on whether gay marriage is legal in the state. The court said the state’s argument against gay marriage is unlikely to win out, and that the state has no reason to deny gay couples the right to marry. On Monday, Christie announced he would drop his suit and allow the gay marriages to proceed, though he chided the court for "substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people."

James Credle, 68, and Pierre Dufresne, 56, were among those wed early Monday morning. The couple first met in 1987 at a gay rights march on Washington, but didn’t get together until 2006. “It was complicated,” Dufresne joked. Credle, who’s originally from North Carolina, wore a gold, floor-length traditional gown from Ghana, while Dufresne wore a simple black suit for the ceremony.

Credle was married before, to a man in the Netherlands who later passed away. After his husband died, he rekindled his romance with Dufresne, who is Canadian. The two spent their entire courtship long-distance.

“I really never thought I would do it because I wanted to wait for all 50 states to have [same-sex marriage],” Credle said of the wedding. But he changed his mind when he heard about the state Supreme Court’s ruling allowing marriages to take place last week. Credle, who lives in Newark, is a retired dean of students at Rutgers. Dufresne is a computer graphics artist.

The Rev. Donald Ransom, an assistant pastor at Unity Fellowship Church and Credle’s friend of 40 years, served as witness. The pair gave each other an Eskimo kiss after Booker declared them married in the state of New Jersey.

Orville Bell, an educator, said he met his new spouse Joseph Panessidi, a retired advertising executive, at a gay bar 15 years ago. Both are activists for gay rights in the community, and friends of Booker’s. The pair, both 65, entered into a civil union four years ago. “We’re now really happy to be able to change that to marriage,” Panessidi said. “It’s clear now—you can’t misunderstand what our relationship is. It can’t be denied or refuted by anyone.”

Jenelle Torres, 42, said she’s been with her new wife Lydia Torres, a UPS driver, for seven years, when the pair met at Unity Fellowship Church. “It was monumental,” Torres said of the ceremony. “It’s humbling.” She wore a gold floor-length gown, while her wife wore a suit and bow tie.

Lynne Womble, 49, met her wife Debra Summers, 47, when they were set up on a blind date three years ago. “I knew I wanted to get married,” Womble, an administrative assistant, said. Summers proposed when the two went on a weekend trip. Womble said it was "nerve wracking" to get married in front of such a large crowd.

It remains to be seen how many same-sex couples will take advantage of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling and get married in the coming weeks. Unlike Newark, some towns have not yet begun issuing licenses. David Levy, a rabbi at Temple Shalom in Succasunna, said his congregation includes same-sex couples who have married in Canada or New York already, but who now no longer have to worry about their home state recognizing their unions. “What’s great is their marriages will be recognized, God willing, here,” Levy said.

Tracy Sprowls, a pastor at First Unitarian in Plainfield, said Unitarian churches would be performing same-sex marriages all day Monday.

First gay couples wed in New Jersey

Same-sex couples tie the knot just after midnight as the state becomes the 14th to recognize gay marriage.
Gov. Christie drops appeal