Irkutsk - Firefighters in Russia's Siberia had extinguished 45 forest fires covering 522 hectares of forest in the past 24 hours, but 131 wildfires were still burning on the area of almost 15,000 hectares, the regional forestry department said Friday.

A total of 29 wildfires covering an area of more than 5,000 hectares were localized, and 14,948 hectares of forest continued to burn in the Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tomsk Region, Tuva, Khakassia and Irkutsk Region.

Some 3,000 people, 412 units of fire-fighting equipment and 24 aircrafts have been mobilized to fight the blazes, which are believed to be caused by hot and dry weather in the region where the temperature reaches 35 degrees.

Reports said the wildfires posed no threat to populated areas or industry.

Almost 180 forest fires are raging across Russia, head of the North Western Federal District Forest Department Andrei Karpilovich told a Monday press conference in St. Petersburg. "A total of 100 forest fires were put out on 17,300 hectares in Russia over the past day," he said, referring to data from regional forest authorities.

"In all, Russia has had 15,710 forest fires this season. The rate is practically unchanged since last year. The fires passed through 1.283 million hectares or 138,000 hectares less than last year," Karpilovich said. Eleven constituents of the Russian Federation announced fire emergency situations, he noted. The biggest number of wildfires was reported from Komi and the Arkhangelsk region, while the Kaliningrad region did not have any, he said.

In turn, Leningrad Regional Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Alexei Eglit said that the total number of wildfires in the Leningrad region had been declining over the past decade. "The human factor is always the main cause of forest fires. In the past four to five years people's awareness has grown. We have much less fires now than a decade ago," he said.
Source: Interfax

The drought and extreme heat wreaking havoc across the U.S. farm belt is killing fish by the thousands in lakes and rivers and could pose a problem to migrating ducks and other waterfowl if it stretches into the fall, officials said.

Authorities are tallying up the losses which could run into the millions of dollar as the worst drought in 56 years expands, devastating the corn and soybean crops and forcing ranchers to cull their herds due to scorched pasture.

"Nationwide we are talking tens of millions to hundreds of millions (of dollars in losses). It just depends upon how long it lasts and how widespread it becomes," said fisheries biologist Dan Stephenson of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

"If this drought persists into fall, when the duck and other waterfowl pass through on their way south, there could be a larger problem," Stephenson told Reuters.

In Iowa, losses were estimated at $10.1 million after 37,000 fish were found dead along a 42-mile stretch of the Des Moines River from the dam in Eldon to the Farmington Bridge in the northeast of the state.

Date-Time
Saturday, July 28, 2012 at 20:04:00 UTC

Sunday, July 29, 2012 at 06:04:00 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location
4.733°S, 153.173°E

Depth
66.7 km (41.4 miles)

Region
NEW IRELAND REGION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Distances
32 km (19 miles) SSE of Taron, PNG

108 km (67 miles) ESE of Kokopo, Papua New Guinea

309 km (192 miles) WNW of Arawa, Papua New Guinea

347 km (215 miles) ENE of Kimbe, Papua New Guinea

Extremely adverse weather conditions led Ukrainian agrarians to harvest a very small grain crops. Therefore, this autumn the food prices will jump up, the exports will decrease and the pressure on the hryvnia will increase.

Only the optimistic statement made by the government lightens up this gloomy picture. Thus, according to Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, the weather did not affect the crop much, and it will not be much worse than last year. Cabmin (Cabinet of Ministers) predicts the harvest of the grains cultures at the level of 46-47 million tons.

Agrarians themselves are called official words to be nonsense, and say that harvest will be significantly reduced. For example, in the Crimea, the yield fell by three times. "This year Ukraine will bring the worst harvest in the past five years. It will be about 40 million tons", - the president of the Ukrainian club of agrarian business (UCAB), Lissitsa Alex, is convinced.

The losses are estimated at 40 billion hryvnia by the agricultural sector of UCAB , but only 5.5 are caused by bad weather. What's more important is that Ukrainian Most importantly grain prices are below world prices: because of this, agrarians will lose 29 billion UAH(hryvnia), and increase in the price of land rent will increase their spending by another 4.5 billion.

For the ordinary consumers crop failure will increased food prices. World prices for agricultural products grow for the second consecutive month, and this tendency captures more and more countries. Thus, the increase in grain prices will pull along with itself, first of all, prices for meat and milk, as well as cereals and flour. For example, the cost of pig to feed accounts for 60%, due to rising corn prices, this component is increased by a quarter, and that is another 15% added to the price of the final product.

More or less the same rise in price is expected for dairy products and poultry. In the bread branch , where prime cost of the unit weight of flour in higher, prices could jump up by 20%. As a result, in November, it will be possible to observe an acceleration of inflation.

Economists also warn that hiding the truth by the Cabinet of Ministers about the real state of affairs in the agricultural sector can play a dirty trick against the government itself: the real incomes of the budget will be significantly lower than planned. The lowering of foreign exchange earnings from exports of the grains will create additional pressure on the national currency, and may be another factor in its devaluation.

From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation's infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.

On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked - inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which "just shrink like crazy," leading to "horrendous cracking," said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and "pop up," creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.

In the early spring of 2012, U.S. farmers were on their way to planting some 96 million acres in corn, the most in 75 years. A warm early spring got the crop off to a great start. Analysts were predicting the largest corn harvest on record.

The U.S. is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the U.S. grain harvest. Internationally, the U.S. corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains - corn, wheat and rice - corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.

The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.

As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the Corn Belt. In St. Louis, Missouri, in the southern Corn Belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the Corn Belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat.

'What the world economy really needs right now is a break', one economist says, but instead it appears headed toward upheaval

Freak weather in some of the world's vital food producing regions is ravaging crops and threatening another global food crisis like the price shocks that unleashed social and political unrest in 2008 and 2010.

As the US suffers the worst drought in more than 50 years, analysts are warning that rising food prices could hit the world's poorest countries, leading to shortages and social upheaval.

The situation has sparked comparisons to 2008 when high food prices sparked a wave of riots in 30 countries across the world, from Haiti to Bangladesh.

Researchers say rising food prices also helped trigger the Arab Spring in 2011.

The US government acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that the drought now covering two-thirds of the country will lead to significantly higher food prices.

The catastrophe in the corn belt, which has seen crops decimated by extreme heat and prolonged drought, will have ripple effects throughout the food system, the department of agriculture said in its food price outlook.

US consumers can expect to pay up to 4.5% more for beef because corn, which is used for cattle feed, will be in such tight supply, the report said.

Chicken and turkey were also projected to rise by up to 4.5%, and the price of eggs will also go up, but by about 2%.

Cooking oil, which is produced by the most devastated crops - corn and soybean - is projected to rise by 4.5% as well.Cattle, US drought, Indiana

An ominous plume of black smoke hangs over east London. The scarcely believable news arrives in snippets: A huge blast has rocked the Thames Barrier; a surge of water is ploughing through the city; a sports stadium has collapsed; more explosions are reported on Twitter.

Thousands of people are trying to evacuate, but like the banks of the Thames, the mobile networks are overwhelmed.

It is time to send in the drones.

Professor Nick Jennings prefers to call them unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He is one of the chief scientific advisers to the government, and drew up this fictional scenario as part of his multi-million pound Orchid research project.

Prof Jennings believes the key to mastering the pandemonium that follows large-scale disasters lies in intelligent, co-ordinated action between man and machine.