In a second attack by an Indian gaur in a week in Tamil Nadu, two children were injured while they were walking on Rifle Range Road in Kodaikanal on Sunday.

S. Divya (11) and T. Sivasankar (14) of Naidupuram in Kodaikanal town were rushed to the Kodaikanal Government Hospital.

Later, Divya was referred to Theni Government Medical College Hospital.

The gaur first attacked the girl. When Sivasankar tried to rescue her, the animal attacked him too, said the police. Local people chased the animal away from the area.

A week ago, a couple from Chennai on a honeymoon were attacked by a gaur in Sims Park in Coonoor in the Nilgiris district. Later, the woman succumbed to her injuries.

In Kodaikanal, attacks on humans by wild animals are becoming common.

At least 20 people of six villages were injured as fishing cats, entering localities in search of food, attacked human beings in the areas under Dinajpur Sadar upazila.

"The people of Sahapara village noticed four fishing cats in the area on Thursday. They sneaked in localities and took away many domestic birds and animals including hens, ducks and sheep," Gulzar Ali, a member of Awliapur union of Dinajpur Sadar.

"As villagers started guarding at night to save their domestic animals, the fishing cats started attacking the villagers in paddy fields in broad daylight," said Sabina Yasmin, another ward member.

Villagers have stopped going to paddy fields and started guarding their areas with sticks, said Gulzar Ali.

The 20 victims, including seriously injured Nur Jahan, Rubina Khatun, Jesmin Akter, Sonia Akter, Sohrab Ali, Hasim Uddin and Md Babu, took treatment at Dinajpur Medical College Hospital and Dinajpur General Hospital.

They are from Karimullahpur, Sahapara, Mashimpur, Tarimpur, Chowliapur and Hariharpur villages.

In another such tragic incident, a man was killed in bear attack in a jungle near Benuadhar village under Thakurmunda block in Mayurbhanj district this morning.

The man was identified as Laxman Purti of Benuadhar village.

According a report, Laxman had to collect leaves for timber purposes to the nearby forest where a bear bit and mauled him severely. Though he was taken to a nearby hospital, he was declared brought dead there.

It may be noted that such a sorrowful incident had occurred in Bargarh district on Friday when a villager of Behera Gaon under Ambabhona block was killed in a bear attack.

The villager had gone into the nearby jungle for search for his cow when a bear attacked him, injuring him severely. Later he died in a hospital.

It may be reminded that a bear had killed three persons in Nabarangpur district in June this year.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up and shrinking. Both nature and man have a hand in the change.

The Great Salt Lake is largest water body in the United States after the Great Lakes. It is a terminal basin, which means the water that pours into the lake from rivers and streams has no outlet other than evaporation. This allows salts and minerals to concentrate in the lake such that it is three to five times saltier than the ocean. And yet this briny lake is a haven for more than 250 species of migratory birds who feast on the brine shrimp and flies that thrive there.

But now the millions of birds and shrimp—and the people who harvest the shrimp and extract salts and recreational fun from the lake—are faced with a problem. For more than 150 years, humans have been taking more water out of the Salt Lake watershed than is flowing into it. They are now diverting about 40 percent of the river water (which would normally fill the lake) and using it for farming, industry, and human consumption. In October 2016, the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest recorded level: 1277.5 meters (4,191.2 feet), averaged between the lake's north and south arms.

Five years of drought in the American West have contributed to the recent drop in the water line, as have higher-than-normal temperatures. But the region has seen dry cycles before, and according to scientists, there has not been a significant long-term change in precipitation in the basin. Nonetheless, the volume of water in Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 48 percent and the lake level has fallen 3.4 meters (11 feet) since 1847.

These two Landsat satellite images show recent changes in the Farmington Bay basin of Great Salt Lake. The Thematic Mapper on Landsat 5 acquired the first image (above) on September 11, 2011; the second image (below) was captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on September 20, 2016. According to scientists' estimates, more than three-quarters of the lake bed is now exposed in Farmington Bay. Salt Lake City (lower right) and its northern suburbs stretch around the east side of the lake.

A young farmer was killed and four others injured by a lightning strike at Hussainpur village in Balaganj upazila under Sylhet on Friday.

The deceased was identified as Amros Ali, 38, a resident of the village.

Police and witnesses said Amros along with some farmers was cultivating his land beside Kapna beel (wetland) in the area when a thunderbolt hit them around 10:00am, leaving Amros dead on the spot and four others injured.

The injured were admitted to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital, according to a news agency.

Source: ZR

One pupil died while 19 others, including a teacher, were hospitalised following a lightning strike and destructive winds in Binga and Nkayi on Wednesday.

There was anxiety at a top prison in Gweru after some of its buildings, some of them cells housing up to 500 inmates, were destroyed in a storm on Thursday.

The prisoners slept outside on Thursday night and were busy yesterday trying to reconstruct the roofs over their cells.

A bolt of lightning struck four pupils and a teacher at Mabobolo Primary School in Binga.

One of the pupils died on admission at Kamativi Hospital while four others including the teacher were rushed to the same hospital with serious burns.

Briana Caviness has 55 stitches on her face, and nine more in her head. All the seven year old was doing was visiting and playing with her toys in her grandmother's front yard.

"It was like everything slowed down," said Phyllis Roary. "It was like a dream. It was unreal."

Roary said Briana and her other grand children were outside when someone at her neighbor's house opened the neighbor's front door and their pit bull ran outside, and went into Roary's yard.

Briana saw the dog too late.

"And when she looked up and she said nice doggy you come to play - that's when he grabbed her by the face and swung her" Roary said.

She said someone tried to kick the dog off Briana. The other kids ran and jumped on top off a jeep.

Their screams brought neighbors and relatives out.

Roary said her son, Briana's father, ran to his daughter.

"When I got out to the front door I saw my son throw the dog and the dog jumped up from there. My granddaughter was running to me. She said grand mommy he tore my face, he tore my face."

A more than 6-foot-long leatherback turtle washed ashore on the Long Island Sound coast of Orient this week.

The body of the turtle, an endangered species in both New York State and federally, apparently floated onto the sand Monday, according to neighbors in the Orient by the Sea development.

Debra Iannelli, who lives on Sound View Road, said a friend texted her a picture of the turtle on Wednesday, a day after the Riverhead Foundation arrived at the beach to collect muscle samples. Her husband, Peter, measured the turtle with a measuring tape on their beach, where the turtle washed up.

The couple have seen dolphins and whales before since moving to the area 20 years ago, but they've never seen a turtle so large, she said.

DeKalb County firefighters were battling a blaze Friday afternoon near the First Baptist Church in Lithonia, Channel 2 Action News reported. The scene is on Hillandale Drive near I-20. The blaze was reported under control about 5:30 p.m.

Also, crews in Forsyth County were battling a 1-acre fire on Greenwood Acres near Cumming, Channel 2 reported. That blaze was threatening three homes in a neighborhood.

There were 64 new fires reported statewide since Thursday, Georgia Forestry Commission spokeswoman Wendy Burnett said.

In all, October wildfire activity in the state was more than 200 times the five-year average for the month, the GFC said in a Facebook post.

"We are stretched with fires breaking out all over," Burnett said, "but our folks are some of the most dedicated and professional that you could hope to meet. So we are confident when we say, 'We've got this.'"

Burnett said the GFC has been able to move some firefighters from areas with lower activity to some of the "hot spots." And the agency has gotten help from local fire departments and other agencies.

Gwinnett County fire spokesman Tommy Rutledge said the GFC has helped his agency cut firebreaks around the perimeter of burn areas as needed.

Nature makes its own collection of snowballs on the Arctic shore of the Gulf of Ob.

Like thousands of white cannonballs dumped on the beach, you think these have to be manmade, perhaps part of some sculpture exhibition. But the giant snowballs are entirely natural, although the sight has not been witnessed here in living memory.

It was ten days ago that the villagers of Nyda, just above the Arctic Circle, started noticing the phenomenon. Some are the size of tennis balls. Others almost as large as a basketball.

Local resident Ekaterina Chernykh said: 'We have them only in one place. It's as if someone spilled them. They are all of different sizes, from tennis balls to volleyball.

'We all were very surprised. Many people believed it only when saw with they own eyes. This has not happened previously. And there was not so much snow for them to form. It's so interesting.'

Valery Akulov, from the village administration, said: 'Even old-timers say they see this phenomenon for the first time. These balls appeared about a week and a half ago.