Rare 'Fire Tornado' in Brazil

A rare fire tornado appeared in the Brazilian municipality of Aracatuba on Wednesday, bringing traffic to a halt on a nearby highway and burning thousands of acres.

Though a rare phenomenon, the formation of a fire tornado, or a whirl is quite simple.

When there is a warm updraft of air and convergence of fire, say from a wildfire, a vortex of flame can occur. As the heated air from the fire rises, strong air currents cause flame to spin, shaping it into a tornado.

This area in Brazil ig going through a terrible drought.  Crews in Brazil have contained the fire and may monitor the site of the blaze for the next couple of days.

U.S. Army Skydiver Gets Caught on Flagpole at Baseball Game

A few years back i had the opportunity to do a media ride with the U.S. Army Golden Knight Parachute team.  What a great experience and time with these fearless Americans.

Some of these guys have completed over 2,000 jumps so they are true pros. 

Last night one of the Knights misjudged the landing and winds and got caught on a flagpole atop the scoreboard, the highest point in Ranger's Stadium.

These guys rarely ever make the smallest miscalculation, so this was quite an event.  But even these guys are human.

Huge Chinese Traffic Jam Goes On and On and On and...

Thousands of vehicles were still stuck Monday in a more than 62-mile traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China's growing road congestion woes.

The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said.

The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices.

That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods.

The latest clog has been worsened by the road improvement project, made necessary by highway damage caused by a steady increase in cargo traffic, the Global Times said.

China has embarked in recent years on a huge expansion of its national road system but soaring traffic periodically overwhelms the grid.

The congestion was expected to last into mid-September...What!

Tropical Storm Danielle Gaining Strength

Tropical Storm Danielle in the central Atlantic Ocean was expected to strengthen into a hurricane in the next 24 hours as it moved west-northwest toward Bermuda, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an early Monday advisory.

Danielle, the fourth named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, was located about 850 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands with winds of about 60 miles per hour.

Danielle currently is heading northwest toward Bermuda and not toward Florida or the key oil and gas producing areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Visa, Bank of America Test Cell Phone Payments

 Bank of America Corp, the largest U.S. consumer bank, and Visa the world's largest payment processor, plan to begin a test program next month that lets customers use smartphones to pay for purchases in stores.

The program, to run from September through the end of the year in the New York area, is the biggest step yet by the two companies toward creating a "digital wallet" with a host of financial capabilities built into the latest, most sophisticated mobile phones.

Major U.S. banks, technology companies and cellphone providers are jockeying for the lead in the technology, which some say could become a primary means of everyday purchases.

Mobile payments have been used for years in countries such as Japan, the United States has been much slower to adopt the technology.

Bank of America declined to say how many people would be involved in the pilot, and a company spokeswoman declined to comment on Visa's involvement.

Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said the Bank of America pilot was not larger than the company's other mobile trials, but she said it could have a more powerful impact on the market than some previous pilots.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Discover Financial Services are working on forming a joint venture aimed at offering mobile payments services.