A 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Ecuador at 1:57 UTC. The depth of the earthquake was 29.8 km (18.5 miles) SW of Manta and 380 km (236 miles) WSW of the capital QUITO, Ecuador. At the end of October, a 4.0 magnitude earthquake near Quito caused landslides and left cracks in some homes. Buildings were shaken but there have been no reports yet issued of damages. Ecuador sits in the Nazca tectonic plate which creates adjacent stress with the neighboring Caribbean Plate.

Bangladesh is looking for farmland outside the country.

"Whether from the public sector or the private sector, the government of Bangladesh is fully behind any attempts to seek out unused land beyond its borders," Minister of Food and Disaster Management Muhammad Abdur Razzaque told IRIN, the news service of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

So far Bangladeshi officials are involved in preliminary discussions with Ukraine for wheat production and are considering Cambodia for rice, as well as ventures with sub-Saharan Africa, Razzaque said.

The dominant food crop of Bangladesh is rice, accounting for about 94.55 percent of the total cereal crop production.

With little arable land and frequent natural disasters, Bangladesh has often struggled to feed its population, now totaling about 160 million. It has the highest population density in the world but also one of the lowest rates of arable land per resident in the world, totaling about 54 hectares per 1,000 people in 2008, World Bank figures show.

A pungent odor invaded a local community, forcing many concerned residents to call 911. The smell was gone by Tuesday night, but it lingered over Lorain for several hours Tuesday morning.

"I smell gas down here on West 21st Street and I don't know where it's coming from, but it's pretty strong down here," said one 911 caller.

"I got a strong odor of gas in my apartment, it just woke me out of my sleep," said another.

Lorain firefighters responded to calls from all over the city between 5 a.m. 9 a.m. Tuesday. The complaints are all the same.

"It's a real, real strong propane smell," said another 911 caller.

"It just smelled like gas, it was a really bad smell, and everything, and I smelled it all the way from my house, all the way up to the high school and everything," said Lorain resident Samantha Haupt.

A strong earthquake hit Indonesia's eastern province of Papua on Wednesday, causing panic among residents, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2, struck at 8:42 a.m. local time Wednesday (11:42 p.m. GMT Tuesday), said Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency.

The agency said the quake was centered about 34 kilometers (21 miles) southwest of the mountainous town of Oksibil at a depth of 57 kilometers (35 miles).

It shocked residents in Oksibil, which is located south of Papua's provincial capital, Jayapura.

Etna has intensified its activity today with fountains of lava and ash causing restrictions to air traffic. This eighteenth eruption this year has followed the Stromboli pattern as previous ones did and lasted just a couple of hours. The Crisis Unit at the Catania Fonatanrossa Airport met to assess potential consequences for flights and restricted air space until 16.30 without however affecting passenger flights.

Half of a pod of sixty-five pilot whales stranded on Farewell Spit in Golden Bay have died.

The surviving 34 are stuck in shallow water, between two and three kilometres offshore.

Department of Conservation (DOC) Golden Bay area manager John Mason said there was nothing that could be done for them, other than to hope they manage to swim away on the next high tide.

"They're in a very remote location and they're in a very dangerous location to try and rescue them because to rescue a whale you have to stay with it until it can swim and to do that the water level is usually between your waste and your chest.

Once you've let the whale go you then have to head back to the beach yourself, which in this case would be two to three kilometres away, so we don't rescue them in those situations.

"All we can do is monitor them. I'm not optimistic that they're going to get back to sea but we certainly wish them well and hope that they make it.''

Both killer whales and Chinook salmon are endangered in the Pacific Northwest. And one of the biggest problems facing both animals is that one eats the other.

According to a new study, a single small and vulnerable group of whales may eat close to a quarter of the salmon run in British Columbia's Fraser River -- and that's just in the summertime.

The findings emphasize the importance, when trying to save one creature, of looking out for everything that hunts and is hunted by it. In this case, whales can't rebound unless the fish bounces back, also. But saving both of them is not that simple.

"This is a case where one endangered species is eating another endangered species," said Rob Williams, a marine conservation biologist now at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. "We're not going to get anywhere if we have single-species management that doesn't recognize that what is good for one species may be bad for another."

Southern resident killer whales, which live off the coast of Washington State and British Columbia, are one of the most critically endangered groups of marine mammals living in American waters. At last count, the population consisted of just 87 whales.

It seems that this past year has been filled with all types of strange weather patterns all across the nation.Between droughts,flooding, tornadoes and rare earthquakes many located in regions not known for seismic activity for 50-150 years.This past week alone reports have been flowing in from worried residents throughout Oklahoma,Georgia,Tennessee,& Texas.The residents reported they heard loud booming sounds while the earth beneath them rattled around .Radar tracking captured birds or bugs fleeing on as the tremors occured.Are these tremors the result caused by seismic waves ? You ask what are seismic waves ?

Seismic waves are waves of energy that travel through the earth, and are a result of an earthquake, explosion, or a volcano that imparts low-frequency acoustic energy. Many other natural and anthropogenic sources create low amplitude waves commonly referred to as ambient vibrations. Seismic waves are studied by seismologists and geophysicists. Seismic wave fields are measured by a seismograph, geophone, hydrophone (in water), or accelerometer.

The propagation velocity of the waves depends on density and elasticity of the medium. Velocity tends to increase with depth, and ranges from approximately 2 to 8 km/s in the Earth's crust up to 13 km/s in the deep mantle.

The sky above this Singapore hotel seems perfectly normal...but then something weird starts happening in the clouds. They suddenly change shapes, brighten and dim, and seem to pulsate for no apparent reason. This strange phenomenon has baffled scientists...until now.


Videos capturing these strange, rapid light changes in clouds have popped up a lot in recent years, and they defied immediate explanation. But after what NASA rather charmingly calls some "inspection and contemplation", we now have a rather nifty explanation for just what's going on here:

In sum, this hypothesis holds that a lightning discharge in a thundercloud can temporarily change the electric field above the cloud where charged ice crystals were reflecting sunlight. The new electric field quickly re-orients the geometric crystals to a new orientation that reflects sunlight differently. In other words, a lightning discharge can cause a sundog to jump. Soon, the old electric field may be restored, causing the ice crystals to return to their original orientation.

Record snowfall levels have been reported in Juneau, and more snow was to arrive this morning.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Juneau and other parts of southeast Alaska until 5 a.m. today. Six to 10 inches of new snow are possible for Juneau, Petersburg and Wrangell, with slightly lesser amounts in places like Hoonah and Angoon.

Juneau public schools were closed Monday. Eaglecrest Ski Area reminded outdoor enthusiasts it is closed and had no ski patrol or avalanche control onsite.

Several city commission meetings were canceled, as was a lecture sponsored by the Sealaska Heritage Institute. City buses went on winter routes in areas where the city deems it unsafe to operate buses during heavy snow and ice.

Meteorologist Geri Swanson said Monday afternoon the 10.7 inches that had fallen at weather service offices since midnight broke a record for snow falling on Nov. 14. The previous record was 5.6 inches in 2006.