Two bald eagles locked together by their talons in a midair battle survived a crash landing onto a runway at a northeastern Minnesota airport.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Randy Hanzal says the adult eagles couldn't separate Sunday before slamming into the tarmac at the Duluth International Airport. Hanzal tried to take the birds to a Duluth wildlife rehabilitation center. He covered them with blankets and jackets on the back of his pickup and held them down with webbing straps. En route, Hanzal says, he heard a ruckus and saw one bird jump out and fly away.

The Duluth News Tribune says the other eagle made it to the rehab center and is now being cared for by the University of Minnesota in St. Paul's Raptor Center.

Earthquakes similar in magnitude to the 2004 Sumatra earthquake could occur in an area beneath the Arabian Sea at the Makran subduction zone, according to recent research published in Geophysical Research Letters. The research was carried out by scientists from the University of Southampton based at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS), and the Pacific Geoscience Centre, Natural Resources Canada.

The study suggests that the risk from undersea earthquakes and associated tsunami in this area of the Western Indian Ocean - which could threaten the coastlines of Pakistan, Iran, Oman, India and potentially further afield - has been previously underestimated. The results highlight the need for further investigation of pre-historic earthquakes and should be fed into hazard assessment and planning for the region.

It's not every morning one wakes up and finds you've been quoted by the New York Times. That's what happened to me this morning.

In his article, A Change in Temperature, Justin Gillis tells his readers that the issue of CO2 climate sensitivity has become more hotly disputed than ever, but warns catastrophe still looms.

Watching the reaction from the greens, media, climate scientists, and a number of politicians here in Germany reminds me of the time when I was in 6th grade and a friend of mine and I threw a dead mouse in a group of 3rd grade schoolgirls out on the school yard. That sent them off in all directions screaming hysterically.

Well that's pretty much the reaction we've seen with many of the adults (grown men) here in Germany when Scripps announced that CO2 concentration had reached the 400 ppm level. You see, the day before when the concentration was 399.99 ppm, everybody was just going about their business; life was normal. But when the CO2 concentration reached 400 ppm, the gates of hell opened.

Many feared drowned as boat carrying Rohingya Muslims hits rocks during evacuation ahead of cyclone Mahasen

A boat carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims has capsized off western Burma with many feared drowned at the start of a mass evacuation from low-lying regions ahead of cyclone Mahasen, a UN official said on Tuesday.

The boat struck rocks off Pauktaw township in Rakhine state and sank late on Monday, Barbara Manzi, head of the Burma office at the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters.

She said an unknown number of people were missing.

The UN warned last week that the tropical cyclone could bring "life-threatening conditions" to thousands of people living in camps in the west of Burma after their homes were destroyed in violence between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims last year.

Remains of endangered Hawaiian petrels -- both ancient and modern -- show how drastically today's open seas fish menu has changed.

A research team, led by Michigan State University and Smithsonian Institution scientists, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels -- birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels' eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.

The birds' dramatic shift in diet, shown in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leaves scientists pondering the fate of petrels as well as wondering how many other species face similar challenges.

"Our bone record is alarming because it suggests that open-ocean food webs are changing on a large scale due to human influence," said Peggy Ostrom, co-author and MSU zoologist. "Our study is among the first to address one of the great mysteries of biological oceanography -- whether fishing has gone beyond an influence on targeted species to affect nontarget species and potentially, entire food webs in the open ocean."

Hawaiian petrels' diet is recorded in the chemistry of their bones. By studying the bones' ratio of nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 isotopes, researchers can tell at what level in the food chain the birds are feasting; generally, the larger the isotope ratio, the bigger the prey (fish, squid and crustaceans).

Between 4,000 and 100 years ago, petrels had high isotope ratios, indicating they ate bigger prey. After the onset of industrial fishing, which began extending past the continental shelves around 1950, the isotope ratios declined, indicating a species-wide shift to a diet of smaller fish and other prey.

Much research has focused on the impact of fishing near the coasts. In contrast, the open ocean covers nearly half of Earth's surface. But due to a lack of historical records, fishing's impact on most open-ocean animal populations is completely unknown, said lead author Anne Wiley, formerly an MSU doctoral student and now a Smithsonian postdoctoral researcher.

Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government. The 17,887-foot volcano has been disgorging large towers of steam and ash since mid-April, but officials have become more concerned in recent days as activity has intensified. Webcams have shown large chunks of molten rock spewing from the crater, and ash has rained down on the nearby city of Puebla. On Sunday, the National Center for Disaster Prevention elevated its warning level to Yellow Phase 3, the fifth stage of a seven-stage warning scale.
At the next stage, Red Phase 1, a voluntary evacuation order would be issued for residents of nearby villages. Then, in a familiar ritual, bells would ring in town squares, residents would gather with their identification papers in plastic bags, and police and soldiers would offer to move them to safety. Popocatepetl, which means "smoking mountain" in the Aztec language Nahuatl, dominates much of the landscape in central Mexico, along with its nearby "twin" volcano, the dormant Iztaccihuatl. Popo was dormant for decades until 1994, when it began to stir. There have been moderate outbursts from Popo in recent years, forcing the government to evacuate as many as 75,000 people at a time. The government for the state of Puebla has already sent hundreds of police to three of the most vulnerable villages, where 11,000 people could be affected. Shelters have been set up and stocked with food, water and clothes. We're ready for any emergency," said Lidia Carrillo, a spokeswoman for the state.

Another volcano in Alaska is heating up, with seismic instruments signaling a possible eruption. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says tremors were detected Monday at Pavlof Volcano 1,000 km southwest of Anchorage. John Power, the US Geological Survey scientist in charge at the observatory, said satellite imagery shows the volcano is "very, very hot." Pavlof is 60km from the community of Cold Bay. The volcano last erupted in 2007. It's the second Alaska volcano to rumble this month. Cleveland Volcano, on an uninhabited island in the Aleutian Islands, experienced a low-level eruption in early May. Power said satellite imagery shows the volcano continues to discharge steam, gas and heat, although no ash clouds have been detected in the past week. Cleveland is not monitored with seismic instruments. - News 24

A Tri-Cities man has video of what appears to be a large chunk of ice that he says fell from the sky on Wednesday (May 8) and landed in a yard in Gray, TN. Andy Miller says his children were playing outside along Keeview Drive off Hales Chapel Road around 4 p.m. when they heard what sounded like a rocket. "They ran into the house shaking," Miller said. He used his phone to record video of the children inspecting the pile of pure white ice sitting in a gouged out hole in the ground near where they were playing. Miller did a quick web search and found information that lead him to believe it's a megacryometeor. For what it's worth, here's a quick definition we found on line: "A megacryometeor is a very large chunk of ice which, despite sharing many textural, hydro-chemical and isotopic features detected in large hailstones, is formed under unusual atmospheric conditions which clearly differ from those of the cumulonimbus cloud scenario (i.e. clear-sky conditions). They are sometimes called huge hailstones, but do not need to form in thunderstorms." -WBTW

The sun erupted for the second time in less than 24 hours Monday morning, releasing the most powerful solar flare so far of 2013. Monday's solar flare, which peaked at 9 a.m. Pacific time, came just 14 hours after the second largest solar flare of 2013, which occurred on Sunday evening. A solar flare is a huge explosion in the sun's atmosphere that sends out a burst of radiation. The Earth's atmosphere protects us from that radiation, but some satellites could be affected. Monday's solar flare is classified as an X2.8, according to NASA. Sunday's solar flare was an X1.7. In the language of solar flare watchers, an X class solar flare is the largest type of solar flare. An X2 is twice as powerful as an X1, and an X3 is three times as powerful, etc. The Sunday solar flare was the first X-class solar flare of 2013. Both solar flares originated from sunspots that are just hidden from view on the left-hand side of the sun.