Earth Changes
The Frickman family had been enjoying a sunny afternoon June 21 - the first day of summer, Father's Day and also Dirk and Chrissie Frickman's 18th wedding anniversary - when they came across the pod of dolphins as they were heading back to the Dana Point Harbor.
Tristan, 12, and Courtney, 16, edged toward the bow of the 21-foot Boston Whaler as the dolphins swam along their boat. The entire family was cheering.
That's when the pleasant afternoon turned to pure chaos. A dolphin leaped out of the water, hit the rail of their boat and flopped right inside with the family.
At first, it might have resembled a wacky Sea World trick, or a fun Flipper moment.
It was a regular Sunday for Rogerio Zuniga, a third generation farmer in the small community of Lozano, according to his sister Lisa Zuniga.
He was plowing the field on his tractor before hitting an irrigation pipe filled with hundreds of bees. "He got off the tractor and ran and apparently they caught up to him and he collapsed, and they stung his body to death," Lisa Zuniga said.
Family members saw his stalled tractor and ran to look for him, but by the time they found him through the tall, thick brush, it was too late. "He had gaping wounds, the bees shredded him basically. It was horrible," Lisa Zuniga said.
Family members and neighbors told Action 4 News they now fear for their own safety after hearing about the fatal incident.
The smoke drifting from hundreds of fires can be seen in new NASA imagery. It forms a plume that extends all the way down through the Midwest, reaching as far south as Texas today.
How many fires are we talking about? As many as 600. There are 297 fires actively burning just in Alaska today. That's so many fires, in fact, that it's hard to even tell where they all are on the state forestry department's map.
Hyde County tweeted a statement, saying "a person swimming at the NPS day use area on Ocracoke sustained a bite from marine life" and the incident is still being investigated. Wednesday's attack marks the seventh incident on North Carolina beaches in June and July. Last year, there were only four reported in the state through the summer.

A lioness takes her cub to a safer place after heavy rainfall caused floods at forest in Amreli on Saturday.
Following a massive search and rescue operation, the Bhavnagar forest department on Tuesday issued a statement giving the details of the wild animal that died in the floods.
"Our 30 teams searched for wild animals dead or alive in mud filled water and muck for one week. We found bodies of total 1255 wild animals including four Asiatic lions which had swept away in flood waters and reached down-stream of Shetrunji River in Bhavnagar area," G S Singh, deputy conservator of forests, Bhavnagar, told TOI.
Singh said that the bodies were found from Palitana, Gariyadhar and Talaja talukas of Bhavnagar.
"June 2015 was the hottest June since 1891 when records began. Daytime temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in the shade 16 times," a spokeswoman at Turkmenistan's state meteorological service in the capital Ashgabat told AFP Wednesday.
She noted that Tuesday, when temperatures reached 47.2 degrees celsius, was the hottest June day in Ashgabat in the recorded history of the energy-rich country.
Researcher Peter Ross and his colleagues found plastic litter in the digestive systems of two key species of plankton that are eaten in large numbers by salmon and baleen whales.
Adult salmon returning to the Strait of Georgia may be consuming up to 91 plastic particles a day by eating plankton, and juveniles leaving fresh water up to seven particles a day, while a humpback whale could ingest more than 300,000 particles a day, according to the researchers' estimates.
Several recent studies have documented ingestion of plastics in the wild by fish, bivalves and crustaceans. Plastic particles have also been detected in the scat of marine mammals.
"Most salmon species feed heavily on (plankton) during their juvenile and adult life stages," said Ross. "These particles could pose a serious risk of physical harm to the marine animals that consume them, potentially blocking their gut or leaching chemicals into their bodies."
The incident occurred when Venkatesh was passing through the road at night on his way home after working in his field. He went too close to the pachyderm when the scared elephant attacked him. On hearing his screams, other farmers in the vicinity rushed to the spot.
They contacted the forest officials and the patrolling staff rushed Venkatesh to St John's Hospital for treatment where he was declared dead on arrival. The farmer, a resident of Malur taluk, Kolar, had an agricultural plot in Anekal. He is survived by his wife and two children.
Wednesday saw record temperatures for the time of year either side of 40 degrees Celsius in several parts of the country as a heatwave intensified, adding stress on crops in central and northern France that faced a dry spell this spring.
Fires can be sparked by combine harvesters and quickly burn crops as well as the straw left after crops are cut.
In the Eure-et-Loir administrative department, which covers part of the Beauce plain that is one of France's biggest grain belts, local authorities on Wednesday ordered farmers to plough 10-metre-wide borders around fields to prevent fires spreading.
Parents and dog owners have been warned heatwave conditions could trigger a spike in dog attacks after a series of incidents involving young children.
Police sounded the alert after a string of dog attacks on children over a three-day period - including one where a 12-year-old girl needed 11 stitches in her face after being attacked by her families Fox Terrier.
Animal charities have also warned dogs can become more irritable in extreme heat and that attacks are likely to rise as dogs and children play outdoors in the sunshine.
Sussex Police revealed it had been called to six serious dog bite incidents in just three days over the weekend of 19-21 June.














Comment: It's not global warming that we're seeing, but the effects of cosmic climate change and Earth changes on the way towards an ice age. See: