A bear attacked a man, aged 45, and wounded his head on a street of the Slovak mountain resort Tatranská Lomnica, east Slovakia, last night, the country's daily Čas writes today.

The rescuers drove the wounded man to the hospital in Poprad. He was treated there and then released to recuperate at home, the hospital spokeswoman said.

Experts estimate the number of bears in Slovakia at between 700 and 900. They mostly live in the mountains of central and eastern Slovakia.

This past May, a bear attacked a man in the same region, in the town of Ždiar, a few kilometers to the north. The man, 42, suffered multiple injuries and also had to be taken to the Poprad hospital.

Source: Czech News Agency

A married couple in the Tomsk region was attacked by a bear while walking their dog Sunday afternoon, and only the wife survived.

"The married couple went to the district near the airport to walk their dog, where a bear attacked them. The man died, and the woman was taken to a hospital in serious condition. The animal also tried to kill her, it bit her limbs," Viktor Ivanov, a local park ranger, was cited as saying by online news portal Tomsk.ru.

The bear was tracked down a couple of hours after the attack and shot dead, Ivanov was cited as saying.

"Now we are trying to determine whether or not any force had been used against it earlier, whether it was injured, or provoked in any way," Ivanov said. Most likely, he said, the bear had just been hungry.

"The bears haven't managed to store up enough fat in time for their hibernation, they're hungry, and they use any opportunity to find nourishment. That's why we recommend that people avoid going into the forest," Ivanov told Tomsk.ru.

This marks the first death from a bear attack in the Tomsk region this year.

Leaves collected one year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster from surrounding regions had sufficient radioactive toxins on them to cause butterflies to die earlier and have deformed offspring. This is the dire conclusion of a study conducted by scientists of the Universities of Rukyus (Okinawa) and Nagasaki. The study is published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Researchers fed groups of pale blue grass butterflies (Zizeeria maha) leaves from six different areas at varying distance from the disaster site. They found that even in comparatively low levels of radiation, there was an observable difference in the butterflies' lifespan, depending on the dose of caesium radiation in their food, which ranged from 0.2 to 161bq/kg. Leaves were collected from six locations situated 59 km to 1760 km from the nuclar disaster site.

The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) has yet to receive a report regarding possible damage from the magnitude 5.0 earthquake that shook Catanduanes 12:16 a.m. Saturday. PDRRMC in-charge Jerry Beo told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that he has yet to establish communications with local officials in Gigmoto town where the epicenter was located.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) calculated the epicenter of the quake to be in the vicinity of Barangay (village) Dororian at 13.719 degree north and 124.384 degree east, or around six kilometers south of Gigmoto proper. The island province of Catanduanes is just 200 kilometers west of the Philippine Trench, which has generated large earthquakes in the past.

In the capital town of Virac, many people were roused from their sleep by the earthquake, which they say was preceded by a humming sound. According to subdivision residents Guillermo Castilla and Leo Austero, the shaking was strong enough for them to hear creaking and groaning sounds coming from their houses.

The USGS said earthquakes of this magnitude usually have aftershocks, with the secondary shock waves usually less violent but could be strong enough to do additional damage to weakened structures and may occur in the first hours, days, weeks or even months after the quake.

The Long Valley Caldera is experiencing a large seismic swarm. As magma moves through the earth, it displaces and fractures rock along the way. This movement causes earthquakes that can be recorded with seismometers at the surface of the earth. Seismic monitoring is the most used technique for volcano surveillance. Volcanic earthquakes often provide the initial sign of volcanic unrest. Their signals differ from typical, tectonic, earthquakes because they tend to be found at depths shallower than 10 km, are small in magnitude (< 3), occur in swarms, and are restricted to the area beneath a volcano. Harmonic tremor, or volcanic tremor, is the name for the continuous, rhythmic seismic energy associated with underground magma movement. At Long Valley Caldera, there are currently 61 seismometers that make up the seismic network used to determine earthquake location and energy of movement with time.
The first instrument was installed in 1974 and additional instruments were added throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Between 2000 and 2003, the seismic network was updated to include additional, more modern instruments. More than 200 more earthquakes have erupted in the area in a 24 hour period. Additionally, some earthquakes were now reported at shallower depths. Rodger Wilson, who is following this area for tens of years, hasn't seen this activity since the 1990′s! We have the impression however that the frequency of the earthquakes has seriously declined the last couple of hours. The seismicity at Mammoth Lakes California has even increased compared to this morning. Below all earthquake epicenters during the last 24 hours. Depth of the hypocenters still at +10 km. Earthquake swarms are a regular phenomenon at Long Valley but nobody knows where the magma will move next. We will have to wait and see if this latest swarm indicates a massive movement of magma and might be an early-warning sign that Long Valley might be moving towards an eruption. The last eruption at the volcano is said to have occurred 700,000 years ago and is long over-due. - ER, USGS, TEP

A volcano in central Japan has erupted, sending ash clouds down the mountains' slope for more than 3 kilometers. At least eight people have been injured and aircraft have been forced to divert to avoid the dangerous area.The Ontake volcano on the border of Nagano and Gifu prefectures, 200 kilometers west of Tokyo, started erupting at about 11:53 local time (02:53 GMT), NHK reported, citing Japan's Meteorological Agency.

NHK released a video showing the volcano spewing thick, gray smoke into the air."Seven people were slightly injured and one person suffered serious injuries as a result of the eruption," Makoto Hasegawa of the Nagano prefecture fire department told Reuters."Airplanes are diverting their flying routes to avoid the ash cloud," he added.

Nearly three dozen earthquakes have rattled the Mammoth Lakes region in less than 24 hours as the area continues to experience ripple effects of "volcanic unrest," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblors -- all between magnitude 2.5 and 3.8 -- have struck since 9 a.m. Thursday, with the latest recorded at 1:49 a.m. Friday, according to the USGS. The 3.8-quake occurred at 9:21 p.m. with an epicenter six miles from Mammoth Lakes.

Heightened earthquake and ground uplift activity have been measured at Mammoth Mountain and the Long Valley Caldera over the last few decades. At 11,053 feet, Mammoth Mountain in California's Eastern Sierra is a lava dome complex on the southwest rim of Long Valley Caldera, although eruptions haven't occurred for some 57,000 years. The recent swarm of quakes in and around the mountain is being tied to recent "volcanic unrest" marked by gas emissions, tree die-offs and intrusions of upward-moving sheets of rock, according to the USGS.

USGS data for recent quakes

In today's post you will find a Russian National Television film below, viewed only 70 times so far at Youtube, where Russian scientists express doubt on the IPCC's version of the CO2 story, and warn of a coming cold period. It is the kind of film alarmists do not want the public to see. It is dubbed over in English

In fact Russian scientists warn that the recent Arctic melt may actually forbode a coming cold. It's happened before.

In yesterday's post here I wrote about how Max-Planck-Institute Arctic scientist Dirk Notz said he would not bet on the Arctic ice decreasing in the years ahead, saying in a nutshell that there are just too many poorly understood factors and play.

In his response Notz brought up Andrey Proshutinsky (photo above), a senior Russian scientist at the Department of Physical Oceanography at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I sent him an e-mail for comment, and I'm very pleased to say he replied (my emphasis):

Dear Pierre,

I am sorry for delay with my response. I just got your message because of traveling.

Answering your question I can say that the situation with Arctic ice changes is highly uncertain. Our observational record is too short, models are not perfect and initial conditions used for model runs are also very far from ideal. We speculate that Greenland ice melt could be a factor influencing Arctic-Subarctic processes but how it will work is not clear yet. More observations and modeling studies are needed.

Thanks,

Andrey"

His advisories are unmistakable: 1) initial conditions for model runs are "very far from ideal" and that 2) "the observational record is too short", and thus taken together ought to be a very loud and clear message to policymakers who are in a rush to declare the science settled and to build a phony climate thermostat.

The last sinkhole has opened up this week along the newly built West Third Ring Road in Zhengzhou. This is the 15th collapse within 6 months. Pretty terrifying, no?

The reason behind the crater formations is unknown and still under investigation. According to officials, maintenance of the 13th sinkhole has failed on September 20, and a rescue vehicle found itself trapped inside and began sinking into the earth. It might also be related to poor construction material... The cement pipe inside the last sinkhole was full of holes.

A three-year-old girl died on Wednesday night after being attacked by the family dog.

The girl was attacked after entering the dog's enclosure in the garden of the family home in Fiano Romano, an area on the outskirts of the capital, tmnews.it reported.

She was rushed to Santa Andrea hospital where she died of a large wound to the neck and multiple injuries to the arms and head.

Police said the nine-year-old German Shepherd seemed to have been well looked after.

The dog has been taken into care by the local healthcare authority, Asl di Bracciano.