Nine people were killed after being struck by lightning and in incidents of house collapse in different parts of Uttar Pradesh, which were lashed by light to moderate rains and thunderstorms.

According to the sources here, a large number of trees and electric poles were uprooted as high velocity winds hit several districts in east, central and Bundelkhand region of the state on Friday and Saturday nights.

Five persons were killed after being struck by lightning in Ballia, Barabanki, Lakhimpur-Kheri and Shravasti districts, sources said adding that three people were killed in incidents of house collapse in Jhansi, Gonda and Ballia districts.

In Rajasthan's Barmer district, an agitated camel reportedly severed its owner's head, after being left in the heat all day with its legs tied.

After the incident, which took place on Saturday, villagers say they had to struggle for around six hours to get control of the animal. According to a Times of India report, the owner from Mangta village was busy catering to guests on Saturday night and forgot that his camel was kept out in the heat all day. When he finally went to untie the camel, the animal attacked him.

A villager said that the camel lifted the owner by the neck and threw him on the ground, chewed the body and severed the head. The camel had reportedly attacked the owner in the past as well.

Peru declared an environmental emergency on Monday in 11 Amazon jungle districts where mercury pollution blamed on unregulated gold mining is poisoning people and fish.

Tests in the southeastern Madre de Dios region found "mercury pollution above the maximum permitted level, affecting river water, water species and local populations," said a report announcing the decision in the official government gazette.

Environmental authorities detected high levels of mercury in local people's bodies which "can cause serious, chronic and complex health problems, particularly in children and pregnant women," it said.

Mercury poisoning can affect vital functions such as the nerves, digestive system, lungs and kidneys, according to the World Health Organization.

Monday's report blamed the pollution on "unsuitable practices by illegal and unregulated mining during the extraction of gold."

Two brave teenage daughters tried to drag a pet dog off their father as it mauled him to death in his own home.

The dog, believed to be a Staffordshire pitbull cross breed, set upon the 45-year-old victim at his home in Cleator Moor, Cumbria, on Sunday afternoon.

Police say his two daughters desperately battled to pull the pet dog off their father as it mauled him in an upstairs bedroom.

The brave pair, aged 19 and 16, risked injury in a 10 minute struggle to drag the dog away.

One of the girls eventually managed to lock the dog in a room while the other called the cops.

Wherever humans have changed the environment—and you'd be hard-pressed to find a place we haven't—there are winners and losers. Cities around the world shelter pigeons, naturally adapted to life on rock ledges. Farms allow weedy plants to thrive between their fields. Oceans—plagued by rising temperatures, depleted fish populations, and acidifying waters brought on by human activity—are no exception. New research shows that these changes to marine environments are leading to a surge of cephalopods, the invertebrate group that includes octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish.

Scientists have noticed a growth in cephalopod catches around the world since the late 1990s. But drawing conclusions from national fisheries data can be tricky. Not only can catch numbers be misreported, but changes in catch amounts can also be influenced by factors that change the amount of time people spend fishing—like the price of fish and the cost of fuel—or by technological advances that allow fishers to catch more. So an increase in cephalopod catch doesn't necessarily mean there are more cephalopods in the ocean.

To solve this problem, researchers looked for data that would allow them to calculate how much fishers catch over a given time period—a more reliable metric of actual cephalopod population numbers. But finding the data wasn't easy. Zoe Doubleday, a marine biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia and lead author of the study, spent months with her team poring over the available literature, persuading international colleagues to track down hard-to-get national fisheries records, and then getting those records translated into English. Combined with 32 scientific surveys, the records gave the researchers 60 years of reliable data.

The conclusion was clear: Cephalopod populations—from New England to Japan—have boomed since the 1950s. And the numbers aren't limited to species that live in the open ocean, like the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas). Species that live closer to shore, like the elegant cuttlefish (Sepia elegans), have also seen a steady rise in numbers, the researchers report today in Current Biology. Crucially, the increase was seen in both scientific survey data and fisheries records—so it wasn't just an artifact of technological advances or a growing global hunger for calamari and sushi.

May 22 has been declared International Biodiversity Day by the UN. It gives us an opportunity to become aware of the rich biodiversity that has been evolved by our farmers. It also provides an opportunity to acknowledge the threats to our biodiversity from IPR monopolies.

Just as our Vedas and Upanishads have no individual authors, our rich biodiversity, including seeds, have been evolved cumulatively. I recently joined tribals who evolved thousands of rice varieties for their festival of "Akti". Akti is a celebration of the relationship of the seed and the soil, and the community.

Two separate lightning strikes killed a famer and three cows in Kep province's Damnak Chang-Eur district on Saturday afternoon, according to police.

Farmer Ek Chea, 59, was attempting to take shelter at a relative's house when heavy rain and high winds rolled in, district police chief Brigadier General Ung Sam Ol said.

"Unfortunately a lightning strike hit him, causing him to immediately die at the scene," Gen. Sam Ol said, adding that the strike took place during a two-hour storm at about 5pm on Saturday.

"Three cows also were killed instantly by another lightning strike on the same day," Gen. Sam Ol said.

Keo Vy, a spokesman for the National Committee of Disaster Management (NCDM), said the latest nationwide statistics show there has been more deadly lightning strikes this year than in the same period last year.

A shocking video has emerged from China, where a sinkhole swallowed four parked cars 3 meters into the ground. The hole was 5 meters wide, and also devoured a few trees.


Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, but firefighters spent a few hours using cranes to get the vehicles out of the hole.

A local, who witnessed his vehicle being swallowed underground, said, "I was having lunch at the other side of the road when I saw the tree was sinking slowly."

"All of a sudden, the road subsided, and all the cars, including mine, fell into the hole. Then I called the police, and firefighters arrived after a while."

From Boston to Dallas, hundreds of methane leaks were detected by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) during a 30-month pilot research project on the gas and its contribution to greenhouse emissions.


EDF released its latest map for Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, which showed the locations of hundreds of underground gas leaks.

For research data, EDF partnered with Google Earth Outreach and Atmos Energy, which operates local gas pipelines in Dallas. By placing gas sensors on cars that provide mapping for Google Street View, EDF gathered data for more than a year. The testing was conducted in 17 Dallas neighborhoods, though not citywide, covering 700 miles between January and February of 2015.


"Smaller or more remote leaks can go undetected or unrepaired for long periods," said EDF in a statement.

The Dallas map shows dots of yellow, orange and red. Yellow dots mean the methane leak is low, orange indicates a medium leak, and red dots show large leaks.

While such leaks don't pose immediate health hazards, the emissions are not good for the environment. Methane is 84 percent more potent than carbon dioxide and makes up about 25 percent of all emissions. Apart from the environmental destruction, there is a cost to residents.

"This is absolutely not a safety issue," Jennifer Altieri, an Atmos spokeswoman told the Dallas Morning News. "We really don't want to scare the public."

Houses lost their roofs and in some cases walls

At least 25 homes were damaged or destroyed Sunday when a mini-tornado swept through a neighborhood in the southern part of the city of Chihuahua.

Six people were reported to have suffered minor injuries after the storm struck Vistas de Cerro Grande, lifting the roofs off houses and in some cases knocking down walls.

Video footage of the event shows laminate roof panels flying in all directions. One of the injured was a young girl who was cut by flying glass.

It was a phenomenon that Chihuahua Governor César Duarte described as rare and blamed climate change while touring the damage yesterday.

"The weather is showing us phenomena that we've never seen before in these latitudes . . . ."

He said there was no doubt that the tornado was a protest by nature "against the climate changes were are living through."