Australian climatologists have published a study that compared results from five global research groups, each of which used different modeling approaches to develop future wave-climate scenarios.

Their : "We find an agreed projected decrease in annual mean significant wave height over 25.8% of the global ocean area." Translation, as succinctly put by , "Surfing is going to suck for a quarter of the world."

The Jascon-4 capsized early on Sunday at a mooring point around 30 km (20 miles) off oil-producing Delta state. Of 12 people who had been on board, one was rescued alive and another is still missing.

"The search and rescue operation that has been under way since 26 May has had to be stopped for safety reasons," the ship's owner West African Ventures said in a statement.

"The vessel, which is located some 30 metres under water in an upside-down position, has become so unstable that the risk of injury to our rescue divers has become unacceptably high," said West African Ventures, which is owned by Sea Trucks Group.

Chevron operates offshore and onshore joint ventures with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp and says it spends around $3 billion a year on its Nigerian operations.

The U.S. energy firm's 2012 net daily production from Nigeria was 238,000 barrels of crude oil, 165 million cubic feet of natural gas and 4,000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas.

The theatrical rocker who began his career with the '80s shock-rock band White Zombie has reinvented himself as a contemporary horror film master with new classics like "House of 1000 Corpses," its sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," and the recently released, "The Lords of Salem." And when the latter became the victim of budgetary constraints, Zombie turned to the written word for a more elaborate account of his witches' tale in a novel version of "The Lords of Salem" released in March.

Zombie then turned his attention back to music with his fifth studio album, "Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor." Released last month, he plans to support the record with a summer tour of the states, and an appearance at the Rock in Rio Festival in Brazil.

Zombie will switch gears again as he tackles some mainstream fare with "The Broad Street Bullies," a movie that covers the aggressive nature of the Philadelphia Flyers and their assault on the NHL culminating with back-to-back Stanley Cup wins in the 1970's. Zombie will write, produce, and direct the film.

Recently the 48-year old Zombie sat down with The Associated Press to talk about his music, movies, and whether he'll ever bring his sound and vision to the Broadway stage.

AP: How hard was it to transition from producing a movie to recording an album?

Rob Zombie: "The record was done at that point but what I did was I finished 'Lords of Salem,' I finished editing this movie in a barn, stripped the editing bay out, and moved the recording studio in. Went right into recording the record and just stayed away from California where we normally would record. We were out in the sticks. Stayed there for a couple months and this is the record we made and much like 'Lords of Salem' in a sense even though the projects aren't connected I feel they both have the same free spirit of like not worrying about you know, 'Oh, is this what anybody expects? Is this what anybody wants?' I always feel when you think that way that's usually when you do the best stuff because when you're not concerned.

AP: Your movies and music have a lot of fans here, but it seems you're appreciated more overseas. Any idea why?

Rob Zombie: I read this quote from Woody Allen and he was referring to the way Europeans have embraced cinema compared to Americans where in America you're only as good as your last thing is the way that they'll look at you, whereas in Europe you're only as good as your best thing. So, if the best thing you did was 20 years ago they'll still treat you like that's where you're at. It seems like that's just a different thought process. Americans are more like, 'What's new? What's the next thing?' Out with the old, in with the new perhaps. Over there you just feel that in the festivals and the shows are just bigger. Everything about the movie is a little bigger, a little more intense, and a little fanatical.

AP: You grew up a (Boston) Bruins fan, and are now doing a movie on the Flyers.

Rob Zombie: Someone just came to me who had the rights to the story and didn't know I was a hockey fan. He had seen "The Devil's Rejects" and for once, someone could look past the subject and just at the film. He said: "This movie feels like it was made in that time period. This movie has the spirit of what I can see a '70s hockey movie." And that's how it happened.

AP: So you want to be known as more than a horror director?

Rob Zombie: This reporter called me up one time and said: "These new horror directors, we're going to call them the 'splat pack,' we want to talk to you about that." I said I don't want to have anything to do with it. I didn't get into directing to be part of some club with a weird name you made up.

AP: There's apparently much more to you than meets the eye. Music, horror movies, now a sports history flick. Do you have any plans to do a Broadway musical?

Rob Zombie: I've had this idea for a while...at one point I started making a few moves to get it going. I really thought my first film "House of 1000 Corpses" could work as like a Broadway musical because I feel like it has those elements of ridiculousness that could translate to the stage of somewhere between "Hairspray" and "Rocky Horror Picture Show" on stage because it's just the characters are that ridiculous, the scenarios are that ridiculous, it just feels like that. As things change... I look at Broadway the way I do Las Vegas and I used to go to Las Vegas and it always said Sammy Davis Jr. on the marquee and now it says Motley Crue just like you come to Broadway and you used to always see "Annie Get Your Gun" and now it says "Spider-Man," it's like the crowds just change and I feel like soon, maybe in 10 years or 20 years, there will be a group of people that now are bringing their kids to Broadway like "Oh, 'House of 1000 Corpses' musical. Let's go see that." It sounds ridiculous, but I feel that it could happen."

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Online:

http://www.robzombie.com

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Follow John Carucci on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jacarucci

Thehas spotted more than 2,700 potential exoplanets since its launch in 2009, and scientists using the Kitt Peak National Observatory Mayall 4-meter telescope have categorized the home stars of many of those planet candidates for the past three years. In particular, the researchers made detailed follow-up observations of 300 of the stars Kepler found likely to be harboring exoplanets.

"One of the main findings of this initial work is that our observations indicate that most of the stars we observed are slightly larger than previously thought and one quarter of them are at least 35 percent larger," astronomer and leader of the study Mark Everett said in a statement. "Therefore, any planets orbiting these stars must be larger and hotter as well. By implication, these new results reduce the number of candidate Earth-size planet analogues detected by Kepler." []

Several dozen other people were hurt in Monday's blaze in Jilin province's Mishazi township, which appeared to have been sparked by three early morning explosions, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The provincial fire department attributed the blasts to an ammonia leak. The chemical is kept pressurized as part of the cooling system in meat processing plants.

The fire was one of China's worst recent industrial disasters, with the death toll the highest since a September 2008 mining cave-in that claimed 281 lives.

It was the third major industrial blaze to be reported in China in the past four days. The two earlier fires were an oil tank explosion in Liaoning province that caused another oil tank to catch fire, killing two, and a blaze in a large granary in Heilongjiang province that wiped out 1,000 tons of grain.

Monday's accident highlighted the high human costs of China's lax industrial safety standards, which continue to plague workplaces despite improvements in the country's work safety record in recent years.

Many of China's factories have sprung up in recent decades to drive the country's rapid economic growth, but accidents and chemical spills are common, often blamed on lax enforcement of safety rules and poor worker training.

The government has tightened checks on factories and mines to improve compliance with safety requirements, and deaths from workplace accidents fell nearly 5 percent last year from the previous year, according to Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Even in China's notoriously deadly coal mines, the death toll last year fell by more than 30 percent because of stricter management.

Monday's accident could also focus renewed scrutiny on China's biggest pork producer, Shuanghui International unrelated to the poultry plant as it aims to buy U.S. food giant Smithfield in what would be China's biggest takeover of an American company.

Jason Yan, technical director in Beijing of the U.S. Grains Council, said safety considerations usually take a backseat in China to features designed to maximize production and energy efficiency.

"I'm sure they consider some aspects of safety design. However, I think safety, to me, is not the first priority in their design plan," Yan said.

State media quoted survivors as saying it was difficult for workers to escape because only one door to the plant was open while other exits were locked and the fire spread quickly.

State broadcaster CCTV quoted unidentified workers as saying the fire broke out during a change of shifts when about 350 workers were at the plant, owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co.

It wasn't clear how many workers had been accounted for and a provincial government media official, who refused to give his name, said he expected the death toll to rise further as more bodies were recovered from the charred building.

Some employees raised the alarm shortly after the shift began at 6 a.m., and then the lights went out, causing panic as workers rushed to find an exit, employee Wang Fengya told Xinhua.

"When I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames," Wang, 44, was quoted as saying. Xinhua said she and three other workers were sent to a hospital in the nearby provincial capital of Changchun.

Another worker quoted by Xinhua, 39-year-old Guo Yan, said the emergency exit at her workstation could not be opened and she was knocked to the ground in the crush of workers seeking to escape through a side door.

"I could only crawl desperately forward," Guo was quoted as saying. "I worked alongside an old lady and a young girl, but I don't know if they survived or not."

The newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily, known for its aggressive reporting, said the accident occurred in a factory building where chickens were being dismembered. The newspaper reported on its microblog that the fire spread rapidly, with industrial boilers exploding, and only a side door to the building was open with the rest of the exits locked.

It quoted an unidentified worker as saying the fire engulfed the building in three minutes, leaving too little time for many to flee.

The disaster killed 119 people, and 54 people were being treated in hospitals, the provincial government said on its microblog. Calls to fire and rescue services rang unanswered and hospital administrators said they had no information about the injured.

State media quoted hospital staffers as saying that most of the injured survivors were being treated for inhalation of toxic gases such as ammonia while others had burns of varying degrees.

By about noon, the fire had been mostly extinguished by about 500 firefighters, and bodies were being recovered from the charred buildings. CCTV footage showed dark smoke billowing up from the prefabricated cement structures topped with corrugated iron roofs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders ordered that no effort be spared to rescue and treat survivors as well as to investigate the cause of the incident.

It wasn't immediately clear if the workers were local residents or migrants from other areas.

The poultry plant is one of several in the area where chickens are slaughtered and then quickly cut up into pieces and shipped to market. The entire process takes place in near-freezing conditions and such plants are usually built with large amounts of flammable foam insulation to maintain a constant temperature.

Jilin Baoyuanfeng produces 67,000 tons of processed chicken per year and employs about 1,200 people. The plant is located outside the city of Dehui, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of China's capital, Beijing.

Established in 2009, the company serves markets in 20 cities nationwide and has won numerous awards for its contribution to the local economy, according to introductions posted online.

The area where the fire occurred is an agribusiness center, especially for poultry. Nearby is one of the biggest producers of broiler chickens in China, Jilin Deda Co., which is partly owned by Thailand-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group.

Monday's fire hit a company that is much smaller than Jilin Deda. Though it's unlikely to have an impact on China's chicken supply, the accident came as chicken producers were seeing sales recover after an outbreak of a deadly new strain of bird flu, H7N9, briefly scared the public in April and early May.

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Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.

[More from BGR: ]

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The American Cancer Society is pushing to make New York the first state to enact a comprehensive restriction on the sale of candy- and fruit-flavored cigarillos, chewing tobacco and tobacco used in water pipes. Its proposal would restrict the sale of all fruit- and candy-flavored tobacco products to tobacco shops, banning those products from convenience stories.

Maine bans the sale of larger "premium" flavored cigars and other states including Maryland have proposed laws, according to the University of Maryland Law School. New York City and Providence, R.I., also have restricted the sale of flavored tobacco.

"If New York acts, it would be the first state in the nation, and turbocharge efforts nationally," said Blair Horner, vice president of advocacy at the American Cancer Society and Cancer Action Network of New York and New Jersey.

The little cigars, chewing tobacco and loose tobacco for use in water pipes are sold individually for as little as 99 cents or in packs and avoid stiff cigarette taxes aimed at dissuading young people from smoking.

"I couldn't believe this when I saw it," Horner said. "Lawmakers may not even know about them ... this ease of access of cheap, tasty, and deadly tobacco."

New York law prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under age 18. But anti-smoking advocates say restricting sales to adults-only smoke shops would stymie illegal sales and hinder youths purchasing cigarettes through an adult who buys them at a corner store.

Not everyone agrees with the proposed crackdown on sweet smokes.

"This is an adult product, like you have flavored liquors," said Audrey Silk, founder of NYC CLASH, a national smokers' rights group based in New York City. "The flavoring is an excuse to exploit the emotional driven 'for the children' (argument). Adults should be allowed to smoke flavored tobacco. There are already laws that exist that restrict sales to minors."

Driving flavored cigars and other products out of convenience stories will simply drive sales to unregulated sources, such as the Internet, the mail, or Indian tribes, said James Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

"Do you want them sold in a regulated environment or sold without any controls?" Calvin said.

There has been a rise in flavored tobacco products over the last five years, he said, and store owners have improved compliance to 94 percent in state stings to root out stores selling cigarettes to underage customers. A decade ago, the compliance rate was 80 percent, he said.

A tobacco industry spokeswoman had no immediate comment Friday. Tobacco companies have said they oppose smoking by those under age 18. The companies have mounted extensive efforts to curb youth smoking and some of the billions the companies paid in a nationwide court settlement have been directed at keeping minors from starting to smoke.

In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned candy-, fruit- and clove-flavored cigarettes. Federal health authorities and regulators say those products appeal especially to young people and are thought to attract new smokers. The FDA says 17-year-old smokers are three times as likely to use flavored cigarettes as smokers over the age of 25.

The agency says almost 90 percent of adult smokers picked up the habit as teenagers, and it estimates the 2009 ban helps prevent an average of more than 3,600 young people each day from starting to smoke.

The ban on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distributing flavored cigarettes didn't include menthol cigarettes or some flavored tobacco products such as cigars. The FDA is studying those products.

Although New York City has a measure to restrict the candy- and fruit-flavored tobacco, city youths can easily buy them across the city line. As other states consider restrictions, the New York state effort is bolstered by New York City's already enacted ordinance that the courts have upheld.

"They are not selling broccoli and spinach flavored products," said Russ Haven of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which supports the New York bill. "These are marketed for kids."

Forty miles off the coast of Alaska lies an uninhabited island, abandoned for the .

For Joan Naviyuk Kane, who launched a crowdsourced Web-funding campaign to visit the island, it's rich with family history and ancestral roots.

Joan Naviyuk Kane looks at photos of Alaska's King Island. (Rachel D'Oro/AP)

Now, an anonymous donation has assured the 35-year-olds travel to King Island this summer, which is a rough ride over the Bering Sea, about six hours by boat or two hours by helicopter.

Kane wants to visit the place she has only heard about from her mother and grandparents: An isolated spot where the King Island tribe subsisted for thousands of years, until being relocated a half-century ago.

Her fundraising success is very surreal but in a very positive way, Kane told Yahoo News by phone from Anchorage. All my knowledge of King Island are stories that are told to me, my relatives talking to me about it."

The island, which once had a population of about 200, was depleted when men were shipped off to fight in World War II, and then further diminished by a tuberculosis outbreak. The islanders had previously managed to survive for thousands of years as hunters and ivory carvers.

Finally, the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the remaining school in 1959 for fear of a rockslide, according to Kane, which forced the last of the population to relocate.

My family comes from King Island, Kane, a member of the island tribe, explains on thewebsite. I am seeking funding in order to research, undertake, and document a trip to the King Island while my mother and her remaining siblingsas well as others who were born and raised on the islandare still alive, interested, and capable of making the trip together to ensure that King Islanders remain connected to our ancestors, culture, and place of origin, she added.

Kane examines a walrus ivory letter opener carved by her late grandfather. (Rachel D'Oro/AP)

Kane has raised more than $49,000, surpassing her goal of $31,000 for the two-week trip.

The response to her story has overwhelmed the writer, who plans to document the experience. Im still trying to process it, the mother of two told Yahoo News. She says she is looking forward to seeing the house where her mother grew up.

"We sincerely apologize for the harm that was caused by the teachers and administrators who abused anyone during their years at Horace Mann School," wrote Board Chairman Steven Friedman and Head of School Thomas Kelly in the three-page letter. "These unconscionable betrayals of trust never should have happened."

The Bronx district attorney's office and the New York Police Department launched an investigation into allegations of abuse at the school after a New York Times Magazine article last summer that said the academy was plagued by teachers who sexually abused children in the 1970s.

Friday's letter apologizes for abuse by former teachers and administrators between 1962 and 1996.

In April, prosecutors said that while there was a systemic pattern of suspected sexual abuse at the Bronx school, the statute of limitations to prosecute them has expired.

In the letter Friday, Friedman and Kelly said the school had hired a private mediation firm which presented the board of trustees with impact statements from 31 individuals who described their abuse. They said settlements have been reached with "the great majority" of those individuals.

Additionally, Friedman and Kelly said the school's board would eliminate a board position of trustee emeritus and create an advisory board on student safety, which may include a victim of sexual abuse.

After she graduated from the University of Southern California and returned home to Taiwan, her initial attempts to break into the island's music scene hit a brick wall. But trying acting at the advice of a talent manager, she landed a few film and television roles, then shot to stardom with "You Are the Apple of My Eye."

The 29-year-old actress said she poured her heart and soul into her first studio album, "Me Myself and I."

"It is really an album about me because I wrote most of the songs. I wrote the lyrics. And I wrote this album about my family and friends, my . maybe lovers," Chen told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

One song is written to her fans, and she says "I think the audience can really, really get to know who Michelle Chen is through the album."

Crediting the late Mandarin pop legend Teresa Teng as one of her major musical influences, Chen said she wrote one of the songs on the album as a tribute to Teng and also to a close family member who introduced her to Teng's music.

"Uncle Grandpa's Small City Story" is a tribute to the first pop song Chen listened to, Teng's "Small Town Story,'" because it was a favorite of Chen's great-uncle.

Chen sang part of "Small City Story" on her own song and says she was amazed while studying Teng's live performances.

"When I was trying how to sing that song, you will realize how much detail that she put into the song, like maybe in one sentence with three words, she has to make three different turns (vibrato three of four times)," Chen said. "No wonder she is like the diva of the century."

Some fans who were holding their breath to see how Chen would follow up her success on "You Are the Apple of My Eye" were surprised that she chose to switch gears and start fresh in music. Chen finds that both a burden and a blessing.

"It's very lucky because now people kind of know me already, so I get to have the chance to release my album and a lot of people will pay more attention to my album," she said.

But with every performance, "people seem to magnify everything I do." She said she hopes to look for the bright side. "I just hope that every time I try to sing, more people will hear that I can do it."

She's performing in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia to promote the album.